Sheer Dumb Luck
by Dreaming of Everything
Summary: The Constructicons found Ratchet and asked him to repair their sixth gestalt member. He couldn't say no, although he knew he needed to. Forced into an uneasy truce, he's almost starting to get attached... Slash, poly, plug'n'play, G1 characters.
1. Chapter 1

**Sheer Dumb Luck**  
Part 1

By Dreaming of Everything

Winner of the May 2008 tficcontest!

**Warnings: multiple-partner scenes and themes, plug-and-play, technically slash.**

Many thanks to my beta, **mmouse15! **Further thanks to Rebeccahb at LJ for pointing out that I was spelling Long Haul's name wrong! (Edited 9/15/08 to correct this.)

**Edited 7/4/09: this fic is and will not be canon-compliant with Revenge of the Fallen. These are _different_ Constructicons.**

* * *

It had been very, very easy to figure out who the Autobot medic was.

After all, there were only four Autobots on earth, and after they'd gone public, you could find a fair bit of basic information about each one online. Their roles within the pathetic remains of the Autobot 'army' were certainly easy to find out.

The medic had a stable location. He was cut off from the mostly-deserted Autobot base. And he wasn't built to fight.

Perfect.

It took Ratchet too long to realize that they were there, and what they were. Decepticons. They were at the edges of all the accidents he'd been called to, over the past—three months, possibly longer. They were regularly in town. As far as he could tell, they had never been the ones responsible for the damage, but he was… suspicious.

By the time he did realize, it was too late.

* * *

Was it coincidence that had led them to the same stretch of almost-deserted rural California? He was there because the area needed a second ambulance, something more up-to-date than their old one, and because it was a poor area that couldn't afford to buy a new one. Most of them thought he was an inanimate gift from the benevolent AutoTech corporation: the core staff at the emergency response department knew otherwise, to give him freedom of mobility.

He hadn't bothered to correct the general misconception. If he'd been openly himself, he would never have had a moment's rest. Five years since Mission City, three years since they'd gone public, and the hubbub and hullabaloo _still_ hadn't died down. It was, quite frankly, ridiculous.

Now, driving along the lonely, remote stretch of desert road, visual scans barely picking up the plume of dust behind him and to the right that was proof he was being followed but energy-readings painfully aware of the three bright spots that each meant 'Decepticon,' he'd finally started connecting the dots. Or found the puzzle at all.

Had the Decepticons—all construction vehicles for some bizarre reason, and not even flashy ones at that—tracked him here? Was it somehow a strategic location for them? Had they simply been trying to stay out of sight?

Clearly, they knew where he was _now_. They were following him, and had been for months, although less aggressively, invasively, obviously.

It was… More than worrying. Where had this come from?

He'd tried sending a message to Optimus Prime, this afternoon, when it had finally clicked, once he'd realized what had been going on, right under his nose, as the humans put it. He'd discovered that he was now in the middle of a dead-signal zone when his message had been blocked. He'd waited until it was safe for him to sneak away, and tried to make a break for it.

It hadn't worked. The three Decepticons were still after him.

There was a good chance there was upwards of five of them, but there were definitely at least the three. There had been five construction vehicles he'd seen around the town, all the same shade of dirty khaki, and all utilizing the same holodriver, a blank-faced female with sunglasses and, sometimes, a light scarf. It looked out-of-place attached to the dusty, rough vehicles, but he supposed the Decepticons didn't care much about cultural expectations. It wasn't like it was a good rendering of the human face, anyways.

He'd seen five different vehicle forms, looking back through his databanks, but he'd only ever seen three together at one time, in differing combinations. It was possible they were regularly switching out their alt modes to confuse him, or to create the illusion of there being more than there actually was, although it seemed unlikely. It was energy-absorbing and uncomfortable to take on a new vehicle mode, and triple chargers almost inevitably took a ground vehicle and an airborne vehicle.

Only three were out there now, though—unless he was missing two because of a really high-quality scanning program. Or possibly more: there was nothing to say that they'd kept a handful of other 'cons out of the way.

* * *

At least he didn't have a human driver with him. That was the only upside to the situation that he could see.

It had turned into a dark night, with a new moon and light cloud cover, and out here in the empty Mojave Desert, there weren't any cities to spread light pollution. That hadn't slowed Ratchet down: the light ranges humans could see in were only one out of several available to him. The roads were empty, which was good, although they were also steadily worsening, as he was driven further and further away from human civilization. They were _herding_ him exactly where they wanted to go.

Up ahead, the stretch of paving petered out to nothing but dust and rocks. And then, a few feet beyond that, there was a crescent of deep trench. The Decepticons were pulling up behind him: he was trapped. This had been planned.

He stopped. There was nothing else to do. The three were surrounding him now, weapons trained on him—it was too late for him to even transform, now.

"Ratchet," said one of them calmly. "Chief Autobot medic."

_Slag,_ Ratchet thought. It was always bad when Decepticons decided that taking out the medic was a good battle plan. He'd always managed to get out before, but things were looking bad, and he'd seen what had happened to others, or read the reports, or been forced to simply guess—

"The best known Cybertronian medic," added another.

The third remained silent.

"We need you to do something for us," said the first plainly. "Our… Sixth needs repairs."

"Sixth _what?_" Ratchet asked, furious enough with the situation to risk baiting them.

"Gestalt member," said the third shortly, deep voice rumbling, breaking his silence.

"No," responded Ratchet automatically, without thought. Not that there was anything to think through. So he'd die: that was a risk. And there was always the chance he'd escape. A completed gestalt—the kind of destruction one could cause…

"Please," said the first, sounding slightly reluctant. "Just—hear us through." Ratchet was plainly aware of the two Decepticons flanking him, not just the one facing him—the one who seemed to be in charge. _Appeared_ to be, at least—you never knew, with Decepticons.

"You're a gestalt," said Ratchet flatly, not waiting at all. "A Decepticon gestalt. A threat to earth, the Autobots and humanity. I will _die_ before I will assist you."

"We don't need you dead," said the first, voice still careful, words obviously painstakingly measured and weighed. "It would bring the rest of your team down on us, for one, and you would be useless to us. We don't _want_ you dead."

"At least, most of us don't," muttered the second one darkly.

"You don't seriously think I'd repair a Decepticon with just a nice request to spur me on?" Ratchet was derisive.

"We won't harm any humans or Autobots, before or after the repairs are finished—unless, of course, you decide not to help," said the first. "I'll submit to a full scan as proof."

"You'd let me run a full scan," repeated Ratchet, dumbstruck. That was—

With permission, it was possible to tie yourself into another mech's consciousness. It gave a complete view of intentions, likely actions, personality, history—everything. It was inarguable, absolute proof.

It was incredibly invasive.

Nobody made an offer to go through with a full scan lightly. Especially not when it was for a medic on the opposite side.

"Yes," confirmed the less-talkative third mech, voice oddly—proud, not of his actions but simply of who he was, or something like that. Prideful. "If you require verification, I'll undergo one as well."

"_Why?_"

"We need the repairs, _Autobot_," spat the second.

"Here," said the first, producing a hardline cable. Slag, they really were serious—

Hesitantly—as ridiculous as the idea was, it had to be a trick, even though that was impossible—Ratchet accepted, transforming to grasp the cord, fit it into one of his ports.

Everything except the rush of foreign data was emptied from his processor as he plugged in. He'd done this before, but he always forgot how—disabling, how crushing, the inrush of information was. It left him weak and trembling, after the flood had retreated.

Once it was over, Ratchet carefully disconnected the cord from his systems, fingers trembling visibly, letting it drop. The Decepticon's condition was almost as bad as his, he noticed distractedly before forcing his concentration inwards to sort through the data.

Most of it was useless, even though the true basics—basic processing programs—had already been filtered out. Other information was stored for later reference. The immediately relevant he absorbed, picked through carefully.

It was true. A gestalt of six, their final member hovering on the brink of death. Names and faces, alt modes for the others, and a vague sense of personality—that was all he had about them. He'd stored anything further, standard procedure. That was… _personal_. What mattered was that all of them were, to a greater or lesser extent, willing to play nice if it meant completing their team. All five were willing to do almost anything for that.

No current ties to the Decepticons, and no interest in making new ones. A deep, loathing hatred of Megatron—he had separated them, over the course of the war, and hated him for that, and blamed him for the death of Bonecrusher for the same reason.

No good reason not to help. And he was a medic.

When he returned to reality, the three were watching him closely. Scrapper, Hook and Long Haul, he could identify now. Long Haul was the violent one of the three; he'd taken Scrapper's memories; Hook was the stand-offish one. The _other_ stand-offish one—that description fit the violent one, fit Long Haul, just as well.

Ratchet pulled himself to his feet—how had he ended up kneeling, anyways?—and turned to Hook. He'd also offered a scan.

"I'd like to verify," said Ratchet thinly, face and voice as impassive as he could manage.

Hook nodded, either understanding or accepting or something else or a mixture of the three.

It took longer to recover, the second time: no mech—not even a medic—was built to handle so much extra data.

Everything seemed to match up. The only real differences were when it came to their perceptions of the other team members, and those were still—minor.

"Well?" said Long Haul, voice tense with a mix of expectations, hope, anger, distrust.

And need. They _needed_ their sixth to balance them.

"I… Don't know."

Hook stiffened. Scrapper half-shrugged, an unsurprised but still disappointed motion.

They let him go. Long Haul had whispered a threat, but they'd _let him go._

* * *

**End Part 1**

This was originally written as a oneshot, but it ended up ridiculously huge, so I'm dividing it into pieces and editing it part-by-part, to be posted on . Because it's just editing at this point, and relatively short parts to boot, I should update weekly or biweekly. (Radical, I know! This makes sense if you know my usual update schedule. Or lack of one.)


	2. Chapter 2

**Sheer Dumb Luck**  
Part 2

By Dreaming of Everything

Mmouse15, thank you for betaing, as always! Edited 9/15/08 to correct the spelling of Long Haul's name. Thank you for pointing out the error, Rebeccahb!

* * *

It was a strange sort of pity, Ratchet thought. At the depth of their need, their dependence on the full team being there.

The whole matter was only complicated by the scans he'd done. With both of the Decepticons, he'd—

It was odd. He was a _good match_ for them. Their memories sat naturally in his mind, weren't unbearably foreign to his systems. He'd scanned before, but it had been more… Much more uncomfortable, both during the process and afterwards.

Maybe it was the difference between a gestalt-compatible spark and an ordinary one. That would make a certain amount of sense. As much sense as anything—it wasn't a highly studied subject, and a lot of the research that _had_ been done had been 'inconclusive.' Ratchet knew a lot of people, including some scientists, had written it off as an inexplicable mystery, something beyond what science could understand. He wasn't sure what to think of that.

But they really weren't interested in humans. They simply… Simply weren't of importance to them. That would have worried Ratchet more if they hadn't felt the same way about most Cybertronians, Decepticon or Autobot. They were insular. Apparently, seeking outside help was something they never did...

All they needed was the six of them. They were independent of the rest of the Cybertronian world—now, at least—but so very dependent on each other.

Gestalt.

Ratchet had been close to various Autobots over the course of the war, culminating with his current team. Jazz's loss had been a blow to all of them. Certainly to Ratchet. He thought the hardest-hit had been Bumblebee—who'd found a _friend_ in Jazz instead of a teammate, on top of being the youngest—and Optimus.

Optimus Prime. Leader of the Autobots. Ratchet strongly suspected that Jazz was—had been—the only mech he let himself confide in.

But Jazz was dead now, leaving behind the other four. They were all still grieving, in their own ways. And the five of them had had—the four of them left still did—a loose team bond. Not a 

gestalt-bond, which was much closer: not as close as it was possible to get at all, but still very close indeed. He couldn't imagine what that felt like.

To the gestalt, it had felt like they'd lost Bonecrusher, at one point. Ratchet had purposefully left that memory alone, deleting it without viewing it. He wasn't sure he could take it, and that sort of thing was _private._

He shouldn't be considering the privacy of an enemy Decepticon a concern. He shouldn't be considering helping them at all. He should have contacted Optimus Prime immediately and turned them in.

They just wanted to survive. Human beings and faction lines were irrelevant. Even if that hadn't been the case, they were willing to do _anything_ to get their sixth—Bonecrusher—back. And at least some of them wouldn't go back on a promise—and the ones who would were happy to go along with it.

Ratchet felt… Restless. It was unlikely that there would be an emergency call anything soon—that at least would have taken his mind off of everything, even if it was just another prank call.

It wasn't like he could call up one of the team to chat about his little dilemma. Or, really, he could, and should, be doing just that. Not to try for guidance, but to get Bumblebee to drive over to figure out where they'd squirreled themselves and their injured companion away, and Ironhide to cause large, destructive explosions, and Optimus to lead and cause almost as much damage as Ironhide. And he would be there, with his saw and smaller cannon, fighting off the 'Cons with the rest of his team, the way it was supposed to be, and fixing whatever needed his fixing, if one of his wards got injured. Fixing _his team_, not the Decepticons. The way it was supposed to be. Autobots versus Decepticons.

How could he seriously be considering helping them…?

Optimus _trusted_ him. So did Ironhide, and Bumblebee. He would be betraying that trust. Even if he didn't actually lie to them—which would be hard—he would be betraying them. In the middle of the war, and the later stages, it would have been an unquestionable death sentence, the punishment for turning traitor. _That_ was what he was contemplating. Debating. Thinking about actually going through with.

The war was over… There was no Allspark, not anymore. They were a dying race.

So the war was over. Optimus wanted to believe that, at least. Bumblebee did believe it. Ironhide didn't. Ratchet knew a lot—maybe the majority—of the surviving Autobots and Decepticons would agree with the weapons specialist. Too much blood had been spilled for it to just end—

There was a chance the remaining five members of the Decepticon gestalt would die if their final member was lost. Ratchet had seen it happen with bonded pairs, when one had been lost and the other hadn't, when the 'survivor' had been unable to take the backlash, or simply not strong enough to go back to living alone, or too devastated to want anything but oblivion. Twinned or 

split sparks always offlined together. Gestalt bonds were weaker than that, but he understood what was meant by the team 'unbalancing' itself.

A lot of people had died. Did one or two more, or even six, make a difference? He had to believe that it did.

And they weren't going to hurt anyone, unless he didn't.

He should call Optimus. That was the right thing to do. The comm. lines were blocked, true, but he could probably figure a way around that.

* * *

_He still hadn't made up his mind._ At least, that was what Ratchet told himself as he jounced his way over the rough road—if you could call it that—that led to where he'd stashed his emergency medical supplies. The materials that were only for Autobots, not people.

And now, the materials that were also for Decepticons.

He didn't know where the gestalt was, but they wouldn't be hard to find, he figured. They certainly wouldn't have left, and his comm. line was still blocked. And they wanted him to find them, assuming he was willing to help, because they needed him. And if he wasn't going to fix the injured one, because they wanted revenge, or at least spilled blood, or energon. Or both.

So he hadn't made a final decision, but he was taking action anyway. This was irrational, unreasonable, crazy.

They needed help.

It was like… It _wasn't_ like he felt compelled to aid them. No, it wasn't that. He felt… Obliged to assist them, or… It was that he wasn't able to _not_ help them. So he was going to. Because he chose to. Even if he didn't know why. Why was he doing this?

The crunch of tires behind him startled him, making Ratchet whip around, weapons systems suddenly activating. He didn't relax—didn't let himself relax—when he recognized Long Haul.

"What do you want?" Ratchet asked, voice hard, glaring at the truck. "What are you doing here?"

"Scavenger found this place, and if you're going to help you're going to need supplies. So I'm transport. If you _need_ it."

Scavenger—the name rang a muffled bell for Ratchet, in the dim, deep-underwater way of encrypted data. He'd cut off most of what he'd gathered from Scrapper's and Hook's systems from his general consciousness, what he couldn't let himself delete.

"Fine," Ratchet said, voice icy, turning his back on the mech to pick up a box of basic supplies and his set of field tools.

When he turned back around, he had a distinct feeling that the mech was staring at him with something akin to surprise, even though he was in his vehicle mode, making any expressions impossible to discern. Long Haul didn't say anything, though, so Ratchet was happy to let it go.

Long Haul brought it up once they were both back on the main road, moving swiftly but still close to the speed limit—it was _unusual_ to watch a Decepticon obey human traffic laws. Ratchet had let him set the pace; he was leading the way, anyways. Ratchet still didn't know where his 'patient' was.

"You're helping," said Long Haul at last, breaking the quiet. He phrased the fragment oddly, not making it a question or a definitive statement.

Ratchet didn't answer. There was nothing to say.

"—if you're doing this to get close enough to sabotage him, you _will_ die, Autobot."

He snorted. "If I wanted you dead, I wouldn't be here alone—I'd have the other Autobots and a human military squad outfitted with sabot rounds."

"—So _why_ are you helping us?"

"Because the risks outweigh the possible benefit."

"Bleeding-heart Autobot _sap_—"

"Yes. And aren't you _glad_ of that? I can't say that I am. But if I had the personality of almost any other Autobot I've met, certain as slag any Decepticon, you _would_ be dead right now, or close to it. You certainly wouldn't be getting _help_." Ratchet's voice was laden with scorn, and even he wasn't sure how much of it was self-directed.

There was a long period of silence.

"Thanks." The single word was said reluctantly, almost angrily, but it was still said.

Ratchet didn't know how to respond to that.

* * *

They were underground. Judging by the confusing three-dimensional maze that Longhaul was leading him through, it didn't matter to the Decepticons that he'd had one entrance revealed to him, because there were still a half-dozen more, and any number of traps around and just inside them. The base was, disturbingly, permanent-looking. It wasn't a quick, bare-bones knock-up of a job. That fact set Ratchet's nerves even more on edge—which said something, considering the situation.

Lost in his thoughts and put too on-edge by the bad situation and the eerie, silent tangle of cramped passageways, Ratchet was startled when his guide finally stopped. Ratchet transformed, nervous, glancing quickly around the empty room before turning to quickly unload the supplies he'd brought off of Longhaul, who wasn't verbally complaining—yet—but had his engine rumbling threateningly. Once the Decepticon had returned to his root mode, he started moving what Ratchet had unloaded, glaring slightly—Ratchet didn't know why—when the medic moved to help him. They worked silently, and finished quickly.

Ratchet was surprised again when he turned to find a second mech—Decepticon—Hook—had entered the room, jerking desperately as he fought off to urge to bring out his weaponry and _fight_, for a few brief seconds.

The urge ended unnervingly quickly. He had no reason to feel this, this comfortable—

"Ratchet," said Hook coldly. The Autobot simply nodded stiffly in return, in recognition of the greeting, barely pausing in the sorting-through of the medical supplies he'd brought.

"Where's the— Where's Bonecrusher?" he said finally, turning from his now-neatly-organized rows of laser scalpels, coils of wire and other materials and tools.

Hook didn't give a direct answer, but nodded at Long Haul, leaning against a wall, who pressed a switch. There was an answering beep from a covered table—it looked vaguely like a stasis berth, to Ratchet—a little ways away, and the panels keeping the injured Decepticon covered folded and flipped away, compacting into nothing but a few inches more of table.

Ratchet had to work very, very hard to keep from yelling at the gestalt, even from a fair distance away and without augmenting his vision or performing any sort of analysis whatsoever. The condition Bonecrusher was in was just that bad.

He was a mess. A wreck. A heap of scrapped, oxidized, salt-encrusted twisted metal. His head had been placed next to him on the table.

He turned back to Hook, at a loss for words. The two Decepticons eyes him impassively. Was this some sort of twisted joke? Could losing a gestalt member have put them this far over the edge? Ratchet was going to guess 'yes.'

"He's dead," he managed to get out, the words said flatly. There was no way a mech who had sustained that level of damage was still online. Not with those gaping rents in his armor, not after being soaked in seawater for who-knew-how-long…

"No," said Hook and Long Haul simultaneously, their words blending together perfectly, and eerily. More proof of a twisted gestalt mindset? Or just the gestalt part? Or coincidence?

"He's not," finished Long Haul on his own. "We can _feel_ him." Almost subconsciously, as if he wasn't really aware of the action, he pressed light nervous fingers over the lower part of his abdomen, presumably where his spark was.

"…What?"

"We felt him almost die, a hundred galaxies away. He was—gone."

"We could feel him again, barely, when we arrived on earth. Now, it's hard to sense him outside of a ten-mile radius, but I believe that we'd need to exit Earth's atmosphere again to feel an absence." Hook's face and voice were impassive, contrasting with Longhaul's still-hurting impassioned tones.

Oh, _Primus_. It couldn't just be Decepticons that Ratchet had to deal with—that he could have handled—it had to be _crazy_ Decepticons.

Hook, who'd been watching the medic closely, made a huffy, annoyed noise. "Check his spark."

"He's been hacked through, scrapped after death, then soaked in seawater for a few years. I'd be surprised if I find a single uncorrupted sub file." Regardless, he walked over to the mangled, salt-encrusted body, fingers searching deftly for the spark chamber, olfactory sensors damping down their sensitivity as harsh salt and the chemicals of organic decay reached them, not necessarily unpleasant (he didn't analyze scent that way) but far too strong.

The chamber was tucked in beneath the Decepticon's neck, unnervingly close to where the head had been separated from the body with a single slash, almost definitely from Optimus' sword: Ratchet had vague memories of the incident. It opened seamlessly, only requiring a little force once or twice where hinges and seams had corroded together, or simply stuck—which was a bad sign. A functioning mech had a list of subroutines, safeguards and warnings a mile long to protect the spark.

Once he got it open, though, there was clearly—_something_ there. The humid, contaminated air it had in it had the typical high-energy flicker of gaseous substances that had been held close to a spark, and puddles of, presumably, more seawater were _glowing_. It looked remarkably like the plasma of a spark, but liquid—although that defied all logic.

"See?"

Ratchet ignored the probably-smirking Decepticon and tried a scanner.

Both attempts using it, with a recalibration in-between, showed the little liquid puddles _were_ sparkmatter, mixed with saltwater and the remains of plankton, plus trace elements regularly found in ocean water and some minor sedimentary particles. It was impossible—

"This makes no sense."

"No, it means the theory is flawed," Hook said smugly. Ratchet bit his tongue, figuratively speaking, finding the human saying having an entirely appropriate element of pain to it. "Are you going to set up an energon feed?"

"I don't _know_," snarled Ratchet. "I don't know if improving conditions will send it—him—into shock and _actually_ kill him this time, or if not doing anything—for now, at least, the spark will need energon before I attach it—hook it back up to the body—will kill it because it's survived this long but it's a tenuous state or even if it's the slagging _phytoplankton_ and embryonic crabs that have miraculous curative properties that have let this happen at all—" And there was a very good chance that the crazy Decepticon gestalt would kill him, instantly or very slowly and very painfully, if he _did_ end up permanently off-lining Bonecrusher.

When he turned to face the two Decepticons they were clearly talking on internal comm. systems, whether just the two of them or with more, their eyes dark but for the occasional flicker. After an interminable minute, Hook spoke.

"Try the feed. You'll need to either way."

Ratchet nodded firmly, not willing to give either the satisfaction of seeing his nervousness. "I'll need a monitor, processed energon and a closed-coil circulatory mock-up." He had isolation valves already, to keep the spark contained during the transfer, and afterwards.

He waited for the monitor instead of starting to stop up and cut away the energon lines immediately, unwilling to risk so much as jolting the spark when he didn't have a feed going on its condition—although he wasn't sure that the monitor would help much. The case was breaking virtually every medical rule he'd though existed. Although his scan _had_ recognized the puddles as sparkmatter…

He was just fumbling around in the dark with this case. Experience, training and access to reference material didn't give him much of an edge in this sort of situation.

'Here," Long Haul said shortly, reappearing with an armful of supplies, which he placed on the table. Ratchet bit back both a thank-you and a sharp comment, both wanting and not wanting to say both.

Why was he so conflicted? Why was he doing this at all? Because he was a medic.

But right now, he had work to do.

_First, attach the monitor. Second, begin isolation._ Ratchet tried to ignore the way Longhaul and Hook shuddered whenever he ended up banging his hand too hard against the wall of the spark chamber, vibrating the material side. It made him feel slightly sick; he was an Autobot, and a medic. The gesture was only superficially intimate.

_Third, close the spark chamber and move it. Attach it to the energon feed, start up the mechanism in the preliminary stage. Add the energon. Turn it on._

Ratchet counted the seconds, knowing how long it would take for the first energon to hit the spark without thought, from long practice and familiarity. He turned to face the two expectantly waiting Constructicons a moment before—

(There was a very good chance that they would kill him, if he killed their teammate. Very, very good.)

Longhaul was knocked to the floor with the sheer ferocity of the sensation—fire burning along every inner wire, grinding into armor plates and sensor nodes—the overload of information cutting his control over his own body. Hook gave a low Cybertronian scream, a babble of static too low for human ears to pick up, clinging briefly to the table next to him for support before crashing to his knees, shaking helplessly.

Ratchet was frozen. The scan said nothing had changed to Bonecrusher's spark, but he'd known a false reading had been a risk. He'd just killed Bonecrusher, destroying the gestalt.

He was going to die.

He hadn't made it past the crippled Deceptions, both motionless and looking almost dead, before Longhaul stirred and Hook pulled himself back and into a sitting position, optics glowing too brightly with the remains of the feedback.

Neither moved to attack. Ratchet thought about fleeing while they were still incapacitated, or at least weakened. If he did find his way back through the maze of tunnels, it would be mostly through blind luck.

"The others can feel him again," Long Haul said thickly through a voice that crackled with white noise. "Even though Scrapper's almost fifty miles away."

But—that meant that Bonecrusher wasn't dead— Ratchet reached a hand to the table for support, head reeling.

"Thank you," said Hook, sounding almost—_giddy_. That was unnerving. "It—he—it's better."

"I thought he was dead," Ratchet said out loud, stupidly.

Long Haul responded. "But he's _not._"

And that made the difference.

--End Chapter 2—

_To all my reviewers: Thank you so much! I'm amazed the interest this story's garnered already. I'll try to keep the chapters coming!_


	3. Chapter 3

**Sheer Dumb Luck**

Part 3

By Dreaming of Everything

Many thanks to my beta, mmouse15, and a big thank-you to all my reviewers!

To my reviewers: If you're willing, I have a poll going (the link's on my profile page) and I'd really appreciate you taking a few seconds to answer the question. Thank you.

* * *

It was a week before Ratchet had the time to return.

He'd been avoiding thinking about—any of it, really. About the rest of his team, the Autobot cause, about the five—six—Decepticons, the Decepticon cause, humanity, his ideals as a medic and as an Autobot, and what they had been, at various times during the course of his life, about traitors and the worth of his own life and the worth of every mech who'd died at his hands, on the operating table or the battlefield—

He'd settled into a kind of willful delusion, or at least tried to. He'd fix them—or fix him, which would fix the rest of them in turn—and leave and if his scans were right, they'd disappear after he was done and nothing would come of it, only there wouldn't be five crazed Decepticons running around, and instead there would be six more stable ones, albeit six that comprised a functional gestalt.

He was also convinced, partially or fully, that they'd found some way to fool a complete scan and a month after he'd finished completing the gestalt the Autobots would be called on to keep them from attacking some human city, or be forced to defend themselves from them—

That conviction wasn't keeping him from returning. And he hadn't left the little town, hadn't even tried to.

…He had no idea how to find the base; he doubted showing up at his storage area would bring one of them out of their hidey-hole again, either. So he'd decided to try the road Long Haul had taken him to, the first time he'd been brought in to do repairs.

* * *

That had worked—they were clearly watching the area around their home, either remotely or manually. Or both. Ratchet was still a good hour from the small copse of shrubby trees the entrance had been hidden in when Scrapper pulled in front of him.

That was… Good, although Ratchet wasn't happy to be in the company of Decepticons again. At least he had an hour's drive until he was forced into actual interaction—of course, for all he knew, there were a dozen ways in, not all of them an hour's drive away. It seemed like he'd passed through a lot of tunnel, especially for only six mechs—and only five of them functional.

Again, he wondered why they'd put in such a permanent base. And how long it had taken. It had been a year until the Autobot base had had enough complete areas to move into it, and even then everything had been bare-bones. It still wasn't fully completed, although all that was left was what amounted to hopeful planning for the future—planning for a time when there were more than four Autobots on Earth.

That was… Lonely. Five years and not a peep, hardly even any Decepticon sightings or attacks—Starscream had disappeared, Barricade was lying low for the most part, and the most exciting thing that had happened was Bumblebee and Ironhide getting shipped out to Iraq to track down the Decepticon drone that had been lurking out there. The single human death that had resulted was the only (known) Decepticon-caused casualty since Mission City.

But apparently these five Decepticons had been here for an unknown period of time. He didn't think any of them had killed any humans… But if it was a third-hand memory, from another mech other than the one _he_ had scanned to get the file in the first place, and the originator had never thought that it was that big an issue, it was technically possible—and, also technically, unlikely—that he'd skipped over a memory of the Decepticons with a human at all, or killing or torturing or maiming or playing with or hurting a human—

Ratchet flinched, swerving momentarily, as he felt a request for a comm. link ping against his sensors, not expecting it and disturbed by the feeling of a Decepticon signal—recognizable because of attempts to intercept and decode Decepticon messages and the occasional battlefield exception or negotiation—brushing against him.

It was Scrapper, clearly, his signal familiar because of the scan. That made it worse, the recognition, and would have made it better at the same time if he hadn't been so disturbed by the _comfort_ of the Decepticon's mental presence.

'_What?'_ he sent back, opening the link between them, trying to keep his tone from revealing too much about his thoughts. He wasn't sure why it mattered all that much.

Scrapper waited a long several seconds before replying, the 'tone' to the words largely blank, stripped of intonation and implication. _'Are there any supplies you're going to need, ones you don't already have at the base?'_

'_I don't know yet. Today I investigate the damage and figure out what I need to know. If there's anything, I'll know by the end of today unless there's more wrong than preliminary examination revealed.'_ It was easy to hide behind details and technical jargon and slight annoyance, perfectly reasonable when you considered the amount of work he had ahead of him…

'_Good.'_

* * *

Scrapper was wondering why Ratchet's voice was so unobtrusive, although there had been a heavy silence between them for over half an hour. It wasn't as much a part of him as the other Constructicons, but not nearly as alien as most voices, even with the Autobot overtones that wanted to set him on edge.

Maybe it was because he was a medic in design as well as in practice—not common at all in the Decepticon ranks. It would probably help patients relax.

It was… Odd.

* * *

They drove past the road Long Haul had brought him in on in silence. Ratchet had been right about multiple entrances. He wondered how many there were.

* * *

Things could have been worse, but they also could have been a whole hell of a lot better, if you asked Ratchet. Bonecrusher's body, now that the remains of the spark had been removed so he could work on it without worry, was still a wreck.

Salt was everywhere. A lot of corrupted systems. He'd need to find out how many personality-based programs had been lost with no chance of retrieval—that could complicate things immensely, if enough of them had been lost irretrievably. Most of the wiring needed replacing, and a lot of the energon, lubricant and coolant tubes needed repairing or replacing—once that had been done he could flush cleanser through the systems, which would prevent needing to clean the inside of every little capillary to remove contaminants. Most of the inner areas would need hand cleaning, though, to remove every last little trace of dirt—Ratchet didn't know where he was going to get the sheer volume of cleaning solution that task was going to require. At least he had the synaptic relays he was going to need to connect the external pressure sensors—vaguely analogous to touch, in human terms. He'd only brought them with him to California on a whim, and it had turned out that he _did_ need them. _How _convenient.

It would probably be best to replace most of the databanks, even if they were mostly sound; the stress would have effects, even if there hadn't been any more lasting damage—

Several engine parts needed replacing. Optimus Prime had cut off his head and someone had gone through afterward and made very sure that none of the (already dead) Decepticons were in a state to go anywhere very fast at all. Really, the head wasn't going to be that hard to reset, though—cleanly cut wires (at least, they had been before they'd been stewed in seawater for four or five years) were much easier to work with than blunt damage would have been, or cannon fire. There was a little scorching around the bottom of the head, where the remains of the neck were, probably from electrical discharge, but it hadn't gotten hot enough to melt anything important.

So, the first step would be to locate and analyze the damage to personality centers, essential programs and other important focal points, which would take a minimum of a few days just to gather the data. At least he'd thought to bring a separated scanner, so he wouldn't have to do it himself. While he was waiting on that, he'd clean.

So that was that. With the beginnings of a plan of action in mind, Ratchet turned away from his intense observation of the body, to find Long Haul and Scrapper both watching him almost as closely. The medic's engine raced briefly with annoyance, but he simply snorted and then ignored the other two, turning to wander over towards his medical supplies. Somebody had sifted through them he realized, with a jolt of irritation, if not surprise.

He was probably short on wire, especially since Bonecrusher used a thicker-than-average gauge as his default—maybe because of the extra stress caused by the third transformation? Gestalt formation was a very complicated, strenuous process—

"Here," Long Haul said, coming up behind him. Ratchet jumped and then bit back the urge to snarl—he'd been surprised, had already been tense. The Decepticon was lucky he hadn't ended up with a saw buried in his side.

He realized he was staring at the bottle the other mech was holding out to him and took it, belatedly. He uncapped it—it was unlabeled—and a quick chemical analysis of the vapor proved it was cleaner. Ratchet was, frankly, baffled—he needed more, yes, but not immediately—

Realization struck as he finally recognized the faint itch on his hands as salt contamination—of _course_ his hands had ended up covered in salt, every part of Bonecrusher he'd touched had been covered in it.

"Thanks," he muttered.

"Nice of you to mention it," Long Haul snarled back. "So_ promptly_ and _cheerily_, too. Don't thank me: Scrapper told me to."

Ratchet took the opportunity to take his leave of the 'conversation' and crossed the room, walking over to a basin mounted in a counter, adding some of the solution and then diluting it with water before he dipped his hands in for a preliminary rinse before turning again to gather up the tools he'd used.

"Just stay put," Scrapper said as he made to move, voice somewhere between firm and professionally, removedly kind. "I'll get them." Long Haul beat him there, the two gathering up the selection of dirtied instruments.

Ratchet shrugged mentally and turned back to his hands; now that he was aware of it, the itch seemed to have doubled or tripled in intensity—he was painfully aware of every passing split-second.

He jumped again as one of the Decepticons came up on one side of him, setting the tools down in the sudsy water—Long Haul. Scrapper came up around the other side, leaving Ratchet hemmed in—

Neither moved. Long Haul swished a hand through the water, muttering about how he had better things to do than clean up after an Autobot. His gestaltmate hid an amused smile, and turned his attention to cleaning a bladed scalpel.

They were close enough that they kept on bumping gently against Ratchet, that he could feel the slow vibration of their engines. He tried to ignore it and concentrate on getting the salt out of his joints.

Once he finished, he helped clean his tools. The three worked in total silence until it was done.

--End chapter 3--

A/N: Oh, looks likes things are getting complicated!

Thank you very much to everyone who's reading, and double thanks to everyone who's re-reading. Triple thanks to rebeccahb on LJ who pointed out that I was misspelling Long Haul's name. Whoops…

And I'm sorry that I'm not sticking to the schedule. Two weeks without Internet and then a 9-hour time difference, a wedding in my immediate family, school-related issues and then moving houses will do that to you. Also, ongoing emotional trauma. But I'm still plodding away at this! Don't worry, I should be more regular from here on out.

To make it up for you, the next chapter should be out within a few days of this one.


	4. Chapter 4

**Sheer Dumb Luck**

Part 4

By Dreaming of Everything, betaed by mmouse15.

* * *

Ratchet had been working for hours and had hours left to go. He was extremely annoyed.

The Decepticon staring at him wasn't helping. At least Hook was able to make himself useful with the cleaning, a side effect of being a self-trained 'medic'—he had at least a vague idea of what things were supposed to look like.

The new Decepticon—Scavenger—was just _watching_ him from across the table, seated in an awkward, crunched-up position, chin resting on his arms, tail clacking rhythmically and restlessly against something-or-other in a steady, ceaseless beat that was driving Ratchet to absolute distraction, and beyond.

—Enough of this. His concentration was waning—he needed a quick break, a chance to refocus. Ratchet leaned back with a sigh, grimacing at the glutinous slime that was dripping off his fingers, a combination of fouling seawater made thick by salt and plankton as the water slowly evaporated; energon; and cleaner, which had reacted oddly with the decomposing plankton—it had never been meant for organic material. Cybertronian scientists had always dismissed the idea of a carbon-based life forms as ridiculous.

Scavenger straightened as well, looking expectant. A table away, Hook looked up and over at the other two.

"The internals need spraying down. I can't work through this _slag._"

Scavenger was on his feet almost before Ratchet finished, the odd spine-like projections circling the back of his head lifting a little higher, like some odd sort of crest—there was a double row of them running down his back, too, and Ratchet assumed they'd shifted positions as well, although he couldn't see them. It was an odd effect, one Ratchet hadn't seen before—clearly a Decepticon design innovation; Autobot body patterns were more streamlined, cohesive.

Some faction-impartial part of him liked the look.

"Washracks," said Hook shortly, setting aside what he'd been working on and striding over. He eyed the body, half-filled with the mucous-like slime, dispassionately. "I'll take the shoulders." Scavenger nodded his understanding eagerly.

They lifted Bonecrusher between the two of them, careful to try and keep the thick liquid contained, and headed off down the hall. Ratchet followed them wordlessly, half-listening to Scavenger's idle chatter. He missed his name the first time Scavenger said it.

"—atchet?"

"Huh?"

"Is… Is there anything else you're going to need? 'Cause it'll be my job to find it if there is—"

"—Cleaning solution. Wire, in several gauges. I have a list of engine parts, too. Those are the immediate problems." He tried not to think about how the mech would go about getting those. Once he'd worked with an Autobot known for his slightly underhanded methods (which was definitely an understatement) and he'd had to do the same then, although he'd drawn a line when he'd asked for metal suitable for armor manufacture and he'd been given a ripped-off stack of armor pieces, still splattered with energon and coolant, with one side painted and the other lined with circulatory vessels.

"Wire's easy—engine parts are easier—I dunno about cleaner, the organics use something different, right?" He paused, waiting for an answer. None came. "…Did you try asking Mixmaster?"

"They haven't met," said Hook, and Ratchet frowned at the hidden implication—nothing he really understood—in the words.

Scavenger shrugged, clearly unhappy—worried—about something, but trying to hide it, or maybe trying not to worry about it at all. "I'll ask him, then."

Silence fell, the three slowly making their way through the huge tangled mess of a base—although it wasn't a mess in the sense that it was dirty; actually, it was very clean. More so than the Autobot base, which tended to collect a lot of dust.

Ratchet didn't even notice that they'd started heading downhill at first, the angle increasing slowly at first and then more swiftly, until the shifting angle slopped some of the liquid in Bonecrusher's body cavity over Hook's fingers. Hook flinched slightly, spilling more of the foul substance over himself and the floor, and his disgust was clear, even to Ratchet.

"Sorry," Scavenger said, feeling slightly guilty. "…Do you want to try and switch sides? So you get the part that's pointed uphill?" He glanced over at Ratchet, then hastily tacked on a brief explanation, obviously for their 'guest's' benefit. "I know you like to stay clean. –But we _are_ headed to the washracks anyway, I guess."

Hook didn't respond, and an uneasy silence fell. Scavenger was clearly on edge in the quiet, trying to keep from moving restlessly—his tail was twitching nervously, sweeping this way and that along the increasingly narrow hallway.

The inevitable happened, and Ratchet wasn't able to avoid it as it came sweeping at him again—the clanging noise it made, colliding with his hip, was loud in the silence. Scavenger jumped, spikes—probably some sort of magnification device for one sensory system or another—bristling with surprise before dropping back to their default position. Hook made an annoyed hissing noise as his front was drenched with salty, slimy contaminated cleaning solution. Ratchet could understand the distaste—salt itched, and it truly was a foul mixture—and some part of him wanted to warn the Decepticon to make sure he got every last trace of the mixture rinsed out of his joints. Like Hook was an Autobot whose health he was supposed to be watching. Like he was his_ charge._

"I'm really glad you agreed to help us," Scavenger said unexpectedly. Ratchet had to work to hide his surprise, even though Scavenger was turned away from him and Hook, who _was_ facing in the right direction, to carry Bonecrusher, had his view almost entirely blocked by Scavenger.

"You threatened to kill me, other Autobots and every human you ran into if I _didn't_." Ratchet was honestly amazed by the sheer presumption in the Decepticon's statement.

"Oh." Scavenger didn't sound particularly convinced.

...And the thing was, Ratchet wasn't all that convinced, himself. Because he could have found a way to make sure that the gestalt didn't get helped and didn't kill anyone. He could have sacrificed himself for the general good. He could have contacted the Prime, like he _should_ have done. His hands were tied, but not all that tightly.

He was, absolutely and inarguably, not doing _the right thing_. But some part of him was convinced he was anyways.

* * *

Bonecrusher's almost ruined body was clean. Ratchet wasn't, anymore. He leaned against the wall and wished, uselessly, for the Autobot washracks—the second thing to be finished when they'd built the base, the only higher priority being the communications room. He made a point to head over to Nevada once every three or four months, largely to use them—although also to check up on the news and make sure everyone was functioning well, and to stave off boredom.

Scavenger looked over at him and frowned. Ratchet scowled back.

"Here, do you want to use the washracks? You're kind of dirty. ...So'm I. And Hook. _He's_ definitely going to get clean before he does anything else."

Ratchet wanted to say no (because Scavenger was a _Decepticon_) and wanted to say yes (because Scavenger clearly had good intentions, meant the best) and mostly just wanted to get clean.

"—yes. Thank you." He looked for a minute at the control display next to him—it was a different design than the ones the Autobots used, a reminder of where he was and who he was with, just in case he had forgotten—then selected a program and stepped into the heavy spray that started, the room suddenly loud with the drumming of water against metal. Unwillingly (he didn't _want_ to relax) he felt his tension start to melt away.

Across the room, the two Decepticons had paused, watching him. "They really do trust too easily," muttered Hook, meaning the Autobots.

"Well, it's not like we're actually going to do anything."

"He doesn't know that."

"He _did_ scan you—and he's not stupid. He's a _medic._"

"There's a difference between stupidity and naivety. I never accused him of the former."

"Whatever—naive or not, I like him."

"You hardly know him."

"We got a sense off of _him_, too, when he scanned you and Scrapper, y'know. And I think he wants to like us—he's helping us."

"We threatened him to _make_ him help us."

"You know what I'm talking about. Will you help me with my back?"

Ratchet turned and arched to one side, opening up joins and gaps to let more water run over him, stripping away two month's worth of internal grit and grime, cleansers starting to work at breaking down built-up oils—the fire station washed all their vehicles regularly, but that only got external dirt, and the dry dust of the Mojave desert always built up faster than it could be washed off.

The two Decepticons were across from him, Scavenger running a brush around the complicated joins where Hook's two left arms met his body, dripping water and tail held high. His outline was oddly smooth—almost an Autobot design; the sensory extensions had been fully retracted, flush against his body.

And there it was again, their abnormal tendencies to touch each other. Autobots would help each other get at difficult parts to clean, but they wouldn't do it by...

Scavenger had curled around the other, one of his hands manipulating a brush and the other holding onto one of Hook's wrists, which was one of the two hands Hook was using to brace them against the wall. His third hand was against Scavenger's shoulder, and a fourth was running a cloth around the base of one of his head-spikes.

No, that wasn't normal. Cybertronians weren't _tactile_. Most—all—would not consider physical contact comforting. A fair number, perhaps the nominal majority, didn't even like to touch during interface, limiting contact to data exchange and energy field manipulation. These two—not mechs Ratchet saw getting along, didn't see cooperating well, even as gestalt members—were clearly enjoying just the act of touch. It wasn't even particularly sexualized. Or out-of-the-ordinary, for _them_. And Ratchet was positive that it wasn't some sort of bizarre cultural difference between Autobots and Decepticons.

On the other hand, if the spikes covering Scavenger were tactical sensors, partly or fully, it would probably be remarkably _nice_ for the 'Con to have someone running their fingers over them. It was possible that Ratchet was missing something, even though he was pretty positive that Scavenger wasn't showing any signs of arousal, or of being concentrated on anything other than getting Hook's joints as clean as possible.

Why did it matter that the Decepticon gestalt was all touchy-feely, anyways? Ratchet turned forcefully away, looking around the rest of the room for a brush.

Hah, there. There was a stool, too. Good—he needed to tweak the alignment of a wire in his foot, anyways, and that would be much easier sitting down. He was pretty sure a pebble had ended up wedged in there.

And yes, there was—not really a problem. It was easy to work it out with the help of a stiff wire brush. With that little niggling problem gone Ratchet traded the brush for a softer one and started working on his knee joints, carefully dulling the tactical feedback he was getting from the area.

He was jolted out of his peaceful state, nerves and concentration shattered, by the sudden appearance of a hand on his shoulder, grip firm, metal against metal unexpected enough to trigger his battle programming, little though it was: his engine raced to life, sensors flared, and his weapons sprang out. If he'd been Ironhide, built for (forceful) peacekeeping and heavily modified for war, the mech who'd surprised him by coming up behind him—Scavenger—would have ended up dead instead of unexpectedly pinned, blade at his throat. Ratchet caught the noise of the sudden transformation of Hook's cannons before he realized, fully, what he'd done. He froze. The noise of Hook's weapon prepping was copied, magnified a thousand fold, by the automated defense systems activating. Probably a third mech in a security center or control room, he thought.

"I just wanted to see if you needed some help!"

Ratchet took a careful step back, backing away from the Decepticon a little, so they weren't pressed against each other, expecting to be shot for the unexpected movement. Nothing changed, so he risked speaking. "I was—surprised. I'm not used to physical contact." From Decepticons. While he was in their base, probably technically their prisoner, repairing their almost-dead gestalt-member. And using their washracks.

Surprisingly, amazingly, the wall-mounted cannons were withdrawn, a full minute after he finished speaking. Every second felt like an eternity. Hook stepped forward instead, all four arms at his side but the upper set still transformed into cannons, matching the one mounted on his shoulder. Scavenger, possibly acting on some unheard cue, produced his own set of nasty-looking weapons. Ratchet didn't move, didn't so much as twitch.

"You realize what it looks like, to have you—an Autobot, an enemy combatant forced into providing help—attack one of us?" That was Hook, his voice low and dangerous.

"I _did_ surprise him..."

"You are very lucky Scavenger isn't harmed, or dead. If he had been offlined, you would be joining him, _slowly_." It was impossible to ignore that Hook—that both of them, but especially Hook—were Decepticons, the way he halfway had been. Decepticons, eternal enemies and intrinsic opposites of the Autobots, dangerous and cold, impossible to trust—and if you were stupid enough to try to, it inevitably came back to burn you.

Hook strode forward, his lower set of arms reaching out to grab Ratchet's wrists in a crushing grip, one cannon rising to point at his head, barely a centimeter away, and the other cannon folding back into a hand so the Decepticon could rest two delicate fingers against the surface of Ratchet's left optic, so lightly that there was no sensation of touch, or of pressure.

"It would be very, very easy to drag your intentions out of you. Settle once and for all any doubt I hold when it comes to whether or not you're planning to double-cross us. You'd be begging for me to get into your systems within an hour—or I could simply cripple you so badly with pain that you don't have the concentration to keep me out, and _take_ the data. And maybe I don't have the skill to drag Autobot secrets out of you, but something like your thoughts when it comes to us? That would be _easy_, wouldn't it."

Hook paused. Ratchet didn't have anything to say. He'd given in to his ridiculous urges to almost-trust the Decepticons, to _help_ them, and this was just the natural consequence of that. He'd be tortured to death, or just to the edge of it, the Decepticons would be satisfied that he wasn't—hadn't—been trying to kill Scavenger, or Bonecrusher, or any of them, and that he'd never planned to turn them in, or tried to, for whatever reason. And their injured sixth would remain in stasis until his spark failed or the Decepticons found another medic—

"But I won't," Hook said quietly, stepping away. His fingers glided over Ratchet's hands as he let go, and Ratchet's vision sparked momentarily as he tapped the optic his fingers had been resting against, firmly but almost painlessly.

The Autobot stiffened with shock, just barely managing to keep from snapping around to stare at the mech who'd stepped back behind him. That made no sense—unless they preferred to have the information handed to them, for whatever reason.

"No. I won't."

"Won't what?" That was Scavenger, but even Hook looked almost confused.

"I'm not going to let you bully me into giving up information—not after I've provided a reasonable reason for my actions. Is a little _jumpiness_ really all that unbelievable? Considering the circumstances."

"Um, Ratchet, I'd really like it if you didn't try to talk Hook into putting his fingers through your optic—"

"You almost _killed_ Scavenger...!"

"But I _didn't_. Not a scratch on him—maybe some superficial damage to the wall, but I didn't even manage any cosmetic damage. _Cosmetic_. And I'm already helping you repair a damaged teammate, as things are! Which you would _realize_ if you were thinking _any_thing through—"

"It's not 'helping' if you're being forced to—"

"Oh, _please_. We both know that you had to be desperate to confront me at all because there were—are—too many ways things could go wrong for _you_—if I'd called for Optimus Prime during our first 'meeting' you probably could have killed me and escaped, but how long could you have stayed hidden? And that wouldn't do anything for Bonecrusher. Carrying through with your threat and killing humans would leave an obvious trail and make the Autobots even more furious. If I had radioed for my team sometime after I agreed to help you, there's a chance you would have escaped, but less of one. And even worse odds if I'd done it after my first visit here, because at that point I knew where at least one of your entrances is. True, you've set your base up like a slagging maze, but you need all six of you—even the completely disabled one hovering at the point of offlining permanently—to get out clean of any situation. At any point I could have sabotaged Bonecrusher while I was working on him—it would be remarkably easy. You'd probably—doubtlessly—try to kill me, but it would be more than a fair trade-off—grounding a Decepticon gestalt in exchange for my own life? Ordinarily, it's not even worth thinking about. If I decided to get inventive, I could probably work out something crippling that would only activate once you combined, taking out the whole nest at once.

"But I haven't. I don't know why, but I _haven't_."

"Why?" Scavenger asked.

"I told you, I _don't know why_."

There was a long pause.

"Because...

"Because I'd never thought that I'd see Jazz die, but he did anyways. Or Wheeljack—he died of treachery, a traitor in the ranks. I had a pair of twins under my care once—I couldn't save one when he came in after a battle, even worse off than Bonecrusher was, and the other died two weeks later—he just didn't have the will to live, anymore, so he wandered off on his own along the borderline until he ran into a Decepticon patrol—he didn't fight back…" Ratchet trailed off. "—And even if I'm not sure I can trust it, the scans I read off of you, Hook, and off Scrapper say you've got no plans to go after humans, or even Autobots, if it was just the six of you, all functional. So I've got no real reason not to help you…"

Ratchet waited, and resisted the urge to turn away: there were still two sets of weapons trained on him, and he knew better than to move unless he was told to. He settled for glaring balefully at the far wall instead.

There were the sounds of transformation, and Ratchet looked at Scrapper, and then twisted around to look at Hook, surprised: they'd both retracted their weapons systems.

"We still have work to do today," Hook said loftily, turning away.

"Are you going to keep us working for days again?" Scavenger paused. "—Like that one time when we were working on that bridge?" He sounded—peeved, but resignedly so, familiarly. Like it had been an issue for so long that now it was almost a joke.

Hook snorted. "You'll never let me hear the end of it—That was at the beginning! I've _learned_ your limits for going without recharge or refuel—"

Ratchet stared at the two mechs, now lifting Bonecrusher's body between them, not entirely sure what had just happened. He was uncomfortably aware of his confessions to the Decepticons, but they'd just—accepted his reasoning, moved on, even after he'd almost _killed_ one of them—

"Are you _coming?_" Hook called back after him, sounding irritated, but...not. Like it really didn't matter, because he knew better.

Belatedly, Ratchet started after them.

--End chapter 4--


	5. Chapter 5

**Sheer Dumb Luck**

Part 5

By Dreaming of Everything, betaed by mmouse15.

* * *

Ratchet looked up, startled, when Hook spat out a bitten-off Cybertronian curse, unexpectedly. He ran through a list of anything he might have done wrong—something to warrant an angry reaction—but came up blank.

"What?"

"Long Haul got himself stuck in a canyon. _I_ need to go get him out—he can't transform, there are witnesses."

Scavenger laughed. "He got _stuck?_"

"It's not funny," iced Hook, presumably because his own work had been interrupted, as he stalked out of the room. Ratchet just shook his head, turning back to the capillary-sized net of energon, lubricant and coolant lines he was trying to piece back together. It was delicate, fussy work, the sort that took vast amounts of time and had very little effect.

And he was having trouble adjusting to the physical differences Bonecrusher had when compared to the Autobots Ratchet had worked on. He didn't know whether it was a Decepticon thing, a gestalt thing, a Constructicon thing or just a Bonecrusher thing, but the mech had much more heat-sensitive lines than was normal. The thick armor was probably enough to protect them, usually, but now that he was actually working on the veins themselves, he kept on welding the wrong things on accident or overheating the little tubes, occasionally to the point where they collapsed in on themselves. And that was _with_ his welder on the lowest setting.

There was another little vesicular cave-in, and Ratchet bit out a curse, flicking off the welder somewhat violently and stomping over to the counter his medical supplies were stored in and on.

"What are you doing?" asked Scavenger, coming up behind him—he moved remarkably quietly and Ratchet, who hadn't heard him coming, jumped.

"Nothing exciting—I need a lower-power welder, but I'm not sure if I have one." He flipped through another box. "And I'm right. I don't. _–Slag_, it's probably still back at the base—"

"I don't think I'll be able to find a welder that fits your hands," Scavenger said unhappily. "Do you want me to ask Scrapper and Hook if they can make you a new one? They'll probably want to look at your old one for reference. ...Well, Scrapper might, Hook usually thinks that kind of thing is 'limiting...'"

"It's fine, I'll just deal with the inconvenience. It's not a real problem."

"But I'm _supposed_ to," Scavenger said, sounding honestly upset—Ratchet, surprised again, turned to look. "We all have our place on the team, and—"

He looked miserable. "And it's all I can do for 'Crusher right now."

Ratchet wasn't sure how to be comforting, considering the situation, but somehow felt he should be. "The engine parts you found me, and the wire, and the cleanser have already been incredibly helpful."

"The parts were easy, and Mixmaster made the cleanser—it wasn't me. And you still needed to work on all the parts I found, to make them work."

"What you found were pieces from Earth vehicles, which is what I would _expect_, so of _course_ they're going to need some altering to fit a Cybertronian body," Ratchet snapped, voice waspish. He had very little patience for pussyfooting around emotional issues, outside of the most extreme situations.

—Damn, now Scavenger looked downright withdrawn, right down to the spikes drawn in close to his body. Ratchet was unsure what to do, lost, and he felt a wave of relief when the door to the room slid open, revealing a mech he identified as Mixmaster with second-hand memories. He didn't want to have to _comfort_ an over-sensitive Decepticon.

Mixmaster ignored Ratchet, marching across the room to pull Scavenger to him, holding him protectively and glaring—with at least four of the six optics Ratchet could see on him—at the Autobot.

He was big, Ratchet realized faintly, big enough that the mixing drum on his alt form had to be solid, or partially solid, an outward disguise only. The number of spiky protrusions and blade-like extensions on him was unusual even for a Decepticon, which only added to his fearsome appearance, although Ratchet could tell that he probably wasn't all that good a fighter, with the number of external sensors he had. They would make him more vulnerable—he'd feel more pain, take damage harder. He was also—

He was clinging just as hard as Scavenger was, and Ratchet should have known that that was the way to calm the mech down, the way they were all so unnaturally _tactile_. Of all things!

"Ratchet!" Scavenger said, shaking him out of his thoughts. "_This_ is Mixmaster—he made the extra cleanser for you."

"I am the chemist." The words were said slowly, deliberately, and his voice was oddly accented in a way Ratchet didn't think was human, an odd tension underneath the words.

They also sounded—practiced.

"Ratchet," he introduced himself, slowly. "Although I suppose you knew that. –Thank you for the cleanser."

Mixmaster relaxed visibly. "If I tighten the molecule some and cut out the level of contamination I can increase effectiveness and intensity," he said, optics bright. Personally, Ratchet was skeptical of his ability to do so, but he nodded. "That would be helpful," he said neutrally.

"Yes—" Mixmaster muttered, apparently to himself, gazing off into the distance. "That—" he turned, abruptly, to the table he was standing by, producing a beaker and reaching for one of the bottles of cleaner. Scavenger pushed himself into his side, watching, and Ratchet bit back the urge to grumble at the display, irritated, as he turned back to Bonecrusher's waiting shell.

He felt an unnerving kinship to Sisyphus. The unending task.

* * *

Ratchet cursed as he picked up the emergency call, immediately setting aside what he'd been working on. "I need to go," he said, voice firm, and stood. "There's been an accident." It was on the other side of town from the Decepticon—Constructicon—base, but not too far—that was good. And he'd need to stop in town to pick up the on-duty medic anyways.

"I'll show you the door," said Scavenger immediately. "And I can clean up here for you." He didn't bother waiting for Ratchet to answer, something the medic appreciated, instead transforming. They moved quickly through the maze of tunnels until Scavenger paused, close enough to the outside entrance that Ratchet could pick up the change in air composition.

"Next time, just come to this entrance and someone'll be waiting to take you in, 'kay? Hook says it's stupid to keep on meeting up with you on the road. Well, he didn't say it quite like that, but that's the idea."

"Alright," Ratchet said, not really thinking about the implications of that sentence, about the change to the routine that had formed, too concentrated on the need to get moving.

"See you—" Scavenger said as they reached the door, Ratchet accelerating away: he wasn't bothering to keep his speed limited to what his alt form's technical specs were, since he was driverless, unobserved—

* * *

Ratchet was kind of unnerved to find Mixmaster the one waiting for him outside the hidden entrance he used, his engine humming impatiently—Ratchet could see the mech shifting on his wheels, even in vehicle mode.

"Fi-nally," he growled, and Ratchet frowned inwardly at the odd catch he'd put into the word, but didn't say anything. To start with, he was a Decepticon, and all that Ratchet himself was there to do was repair their sixth; to end, out of all the Constructicons he'd met—and that was all of them, excluding the one he was repairing—Mixmaster was the one who set him most on edge, partially because of an indefinable sense of unease and partially because of the trickle-down effect of holding someone else's memories in his mind, even isolated memories—

There was a fair chance, judging from what he was getting, that Scrapper or Hook or both were afraid of Mixmaster—and they were _gestalt_. The thought was chilling.

They made their way to the med bay in silence, except for the occasional mutter from Mixmaster. Again, Ratchet kept to his vehicle mode, finding it more comfortable in the cramped corridor and making it slightly more acceptable to refrain from replying to the barely-on-the-edge-of-hearing murmurs which might or might not have been directed at him.

He was relieved to reach the med bay, flipping into a fast transformation before he'd even come to a full stop. Mixmaster edged away from him before he followed suit, then silently slunk into a far corner. Ratchet decided to put him out of mind and turned to his "charge."

He was surprised to find Scrapper there, leaning over Bonecrusher's body. His optics were off, and Ratchet had almost begun to think that he was in recharge when they flickered back on, snapping in his direction, showing none of the fuzziness or confusion restarting programs caused.

"Ratchet," he said in greeting, surprisingly warm—not that that said much. "Thank you for coming." The medic grunted in reply, increasingly unhappy with the way he kept on being thanked—the open recognition of his _choice_ only made the guilt worse.

"Scrapper," he said in reply, because he needed to say something.

"Scavenger said you needed a cooler welder. Will this work?"

He thought he hid his surprise pretty well as he took the tool, looking it over critically before he flipped it on, grabbing a piece of scrap to try it on.

"Thank you," he said, a few minutes later, and honestly meant it. It wasn't anything really necessary, but it meant that this part of the job would go much, much faster.

"It wasn't for you," Scrapper said, and Ratchet looked down to see his hand resting gently along the curve of Bonecrusher's shoulder armor. He suddenly felt isolated, the outsider— He'd never understand what they felt for each other, what made the six Decepticons so trusting, accepting of each other—

And needy. That was the downside. Resolutely, Ratchet switched his attention back to where he'd left off, the last time he'd worked on Bonecrusher, and prepared to start working again.

He was so absorbed in the job that he almost cut through his finger with the laser scalpel he'd been working with when Mixmaster—who had apparently been watching him for a while; Ratchet hadn't even heard him approach—suddenly stuck a bottle into his field of vision.

"He can't feel you waiting," Scrapper said shortly, briefly looking up from what he'd been working on. "Or tell you're there."

_Well, of course,_ thought Ratchet, somewhat dumbfounded. Was Mixmaster honestly so unused to interacting with anyone outside of the gestalt that he didn't know how to do so normally?

Mixmaster appeared to ignore Scrapper, although he shifted slightly, his jumbled armor extensions scraping together lightly. His hand was still outstretched, so Ratchet took the bottle, looking at it with a certain measure of confusion.

"It's cle-eanser," he said, that hitch in his voice obvious again—and, yes, he did remember asking for a changed version that the chemist had said he could make— "Twenty percent more efficient at eight percent lower concentration." He produced a second bottle, this one a light green color. "This one will also break down organic material, but has only two percent improved efficiency for mechanical build-up."

"Thank you," Ratchet said, accepting the second bottle.

"You are welc-com-m—"

That was a processor glitch, Ratchet suddenly realized, and probably not a mechanical one, like Bumblebee's problem, still not fully eradicated. It explained the odd quality to his speech. And possibly it explained what was wrong with him, or at least gave a clue into the matter. Often, a speech impediment, or any sort of social tic, was a sign of something much worse having gone wrong than a few speech patterns.

Then again, there was the chance he was wrong, and it really was just a quick glitch—they didn't have a medic with them. Well, other than Ratchet, now. And Hook could manage some basic repairs, but Ratchet doubted he could manage much beyond fixing simple wounds to the point where self-repair functions could take over. Complicated processor work was undoubtedly outside of his skill level: even Ratchet didn't take something like that lightly.

"What-t? Don't like the way I sp-eak, Autobot?"

"That's just _stupid_. What do you think I am, a Decepticon? And I'm a _medic_. How stable are these?"

Ratchet felt a certain amount of satisfaction at the confusion stamped across Mixmaster's face, even his posture off-balance—at least he could manage that much, even if Mixmaster set him on edge in a way none of the other Constructicons did, in a way that had very little to do with him being a Decepticon.

Although some of that was fading, even with the knowledge that he had a glitch, on an unknown scale. Which made no sense.

"—avoid heat and cold with both, but –more so with the organic-contaminant one." He cocked his head to one side, the move oddly birdlike on his hulking, bristling frame. He rattled off the exact temperatures, to three decimal places each, then started in about how such exposures would change short term and long term effectiveness. He was certainly—_thorough_, Ratchet thought.

"—And maybe fifty years in ideal conditions before there's a noticeable degradation," finished Mixmaster, voice oddly happy. "Ten years past that until that degradation shows in practical applications." He paused, the joy seeming to drain away. "Is— 'Crusher-r do-ing well?"

His voice was worse when it wasn't a technical matter. Ratchet hadn't heard of anything like that before.

"He's probably hovering at the edge of death." His voice was flat. "Although I believe the spark is still stabilizing—that's good. Another five to eight hours of work and I'll have the circulatory system in good enough shape to start the final check for leaks and then try flushing it clean. There's only the left leg left to clean, because Hook's been helping with that. I've made minimal progress with the databanks, which is slightly better than what I expected—that will be my main focus after I finish this." He waved a hand at the plate of armor he'd just finished reattaching lubricant lines to. "The final stage will be sensor networks, and double- and triple-checking everything."

Mixmaster looked somewhere between hopeful and hopeless and looking over, Ratchet realized Scrapper looked the same.

--End part 5--


	6. Chapter 6

**Sheer Dumb Luck**

Part 6

By Dreaming of Everything, betaed by mmouse15

* * *

Hook started in on Scrapper the moment he walked in the med bay door, followed by Ratchet, whom he ignored entirely. His voice was scathing. "What were you _thinking?_"

"Where?" Scrapper asked, sounding mildly curious and remarkably unsurprised. Ratchet realized that Hook was hunched over a set of blueprints, scowling furiously; he'd made several changes, Ratchet assumed, judging by the purple marks scrawled over half of it.

Scrapper moved to read over—and lean against—Hook's shoulder, taking in the problems he'd had with whatever they were designing.

"What is _this?_"

"It improves flexibility: the house is in an area likely to be hit with earthquakes."

"The house meets the legal requirements even without it and it's an unnecessarily convoluted solution that mars the structure's form—"

"The human safety codes aren't nearly as strict as they need to be—do you want the building to come down the minute there's a crustal shift?"

"There needs to be a way to alter that without this hideous—"

Ratchet decided the argument wasn't worth listening to—or at least concentrating on—and let it fade into a background hum as he moved to prepare his materials. He couldn't even bring himself to be too annoyed when he realized someone had gone through them, _again_. That was unnerving: he didn't like most Autobots going through his medical supplies, let alone any one of five Decepticons, the actual perpetrator unknown—

He shouldn't be trusting them not to change something, not to sabotage him. Not now, while he was still working on Bonecrusher, but later—he'd need to destroy or discard anything he'd left unattended on their base—

Because Hook was capable of sabotage. Scrapper was ,even if he usually disguised it. Scavenger wouldn't even stop to think about it—those sorts of deceptions were natural, for him. Mixmaster had the personality to do it, was unbalanced enough to do so even if he didn't have a specific reason to—which he did: Ratchet was an Autobot—and he certainly had the _ability_ to, if he was half the chemist all signs indicated he was. And Long Haul...he probably wasn't the sort to try sabotage when he could just kill Ratchet himself.

He forced the matter away, turning grimly back to Bonecrusher, although he was still distracted, suddenly aware of where he was and who he was with. The issue stayed stuck in the back of his mind even as he worked, itching at the edge of his attention. He was on edge again, the strange calm that had been building up over his past visits suddenly evaporating.

So Ratchet caught on to the approaching Decepticon before he entered the room, with a scanning program he couldn't even remember starting in the first place. He was grateful for the warning, setting aside his laser cutter and turning slightly to face the door for a brief moment, waiting. He missed Hook and Scrapper turning to look at him.

At least he wasn't surprised when the door opened and Long Haul strode in, face blank except for a mild annoyance. Ratchet turned back to his repair work without an outward sign that he'd stopped to wait. Long Haul sat down next to Hook, one leg placed so his knee bumped into him every time he shifted positions.

The room was almost perfectly silent—Ratchet was the loudest, using and moving around tools and spare materials—until Scavenger entered. He didn't turn to watch him enter, his mood too uneasy for him to want to give away his mindset, his unease, but his attention was heightened, sensors being fed a little more energy than was normal—

"Long Haul! You're back! Scrapper—I couldn't find what you needed. Sorry. I found some stuff that might be useful, but—I can check somewhere else, though, I think I have an idea—"

Long Haul grunted; Scavenger didn't seem insulted, and nobody reacted as if it was out of the ordinary, out of character.

"Thank you for looking, even if you couldn't find it. How are you doing?"

"—Fine," he said, voice ringing hollow, and Ratchet convinced himself it was his imagination. Because he was a Decepticon. "Hey, Hook, how've you been?"

"Acceptable." Hook didn't comment on the way Scavenger walked past them, brushing each with his hand or arm or tail, as if it was an accident, or a coincidence—or as if it was a habit so automatic it happened without thought. In the past, Ratchet had found himself confused, and interested in the gestalt effect. Today, he felt almost repulsed. It wasn't natural, was absolutely not _normal_.

This time, he realized when Scavenger moved towards him—he sure as slag didn't want what had happened in the washracks to happen again, especially since it would probably mean he'd end up dead—and had time to turn and face him, to form an emotional wall to keep everything at bay. "Ratchet—how is he doing?"

"About the same." There was nothing particularly strange about the words, except for maybe the tone, but Scavenger paused, briefly. Maybe Ratchet hadn't been hiding his feelings as complete as he'd thought.

"Is there anything I can do to help?"

"No." Ratchet turned away, then looked back briefly. Scavenger didn't look hurt, exactly; he looked blank, and like the tail ends of surprise were slowly fading away. After a minute, he took a seat. Ratchet kept on working.

"Where's Mixmaster?" Long Haul asked.

"Monitor duty," Scrapper replied. Scavenger shifted to look at the obviously-placed camera mounted on the wall—Ratchet had no doubt there were more, harder to see—and waved, then returned to his original position: optics half-dimmed, slouched on a stool, leaning against a table with his elbows, to keep the spikes along his back out of the way, watching Ratchet work.

A deafening silence fell, creeping up on them like fog breathed out of the ground.

Hook and Scrapper started arguing quietly about cost and effectiveness in insulation, and its role in the design process. Long Haul's optics were dimmed—Ratchet couldn't guess what he was doing, but whatever he was concentrating on wasn't in the room.

Scavenger was still watching him.

If it hadn't been for his own unease, Ratchet would have felt at peace, everyone working or occupied, more comfortable and _grateful_ just because of the presence of the others. Well, not him, but the others, and he could have pretended to be included, or just enjoyed the calm.

What had changed? It had just been three days since his last visit, when he'd been—comfortable, even with Mixmaster's presence setting him on edge...

Ratchet paused in his work, still-activated welder in his hands.

He'd kept on asking himself what reason he had to trust the Decepticons. Maybe the better question was what reason he had _not_ to.

Other than the fact that they were Decepticons.

Decepticons with no reason to fight. Other than that they were Decepticons. Because the reason for the war—or the excuse—had been removed, destroyed. How _was_ the war every supposed to end, short of one faction or the other being wiped out completely? Ratchet suspected that Optimus Prime wanted peace, coexistence, even if he never said so, never really believed it was possible.

Well. Ratchet had been offered a chance at that, or something like it—something that was almost cooperation, now.

He tried not to think about how he was using Optimus Prime's values as a reason, or an excuse, while he betrayed him. And every other member of his team.

Ratchet hadn't been bothered by discovering one of the gestalt, or possibly more, had gone through his supplies, at the beginning of today's session. It had only after he'd gone through the likelihood of being sabotaged that he'd been—unreasonable, or maybe reasonable (because they were _Decepticons_) in his actions and reactions. Did that mean that his problem wasn't with the 'Cons themselves, but the idea of them betraying him? Or just of them turning out to be what he'd half-expected all along?

Ratchet frowned at the unconnected wire in one hand. The welder in the other had turned itself off, a safety feature that activated when it hadn't been used for a certain amount of time.

"Ratchet?" Scavenger asked behind him, hesitant and worried. "Is everything okay?"

He didn't react, just stood there for another moment, motionless.

Finally, he set down the welder in his hand; it made a dull clunk against Bonecrusher's armor, the sound magnified in the dead silence. He could guess without looking that the room's attention was riveted on him.

He turned around. "Scavenger." His voice was calm, light, flat. "I'm sorry."

"_Oh_. –Umm, don't be. I mean, we're different factions, right?"

Ratchet shrugged, embarrassed, partly because of the Decepticons watching him—he liked to give apologies and other important things privately, personally, but he knew it didn't matter with a gestalt, and that it would make little to no sense to insist on doing so.

Long Haul muttered something that sounded suspiciously "—deserves it, too damn clingy—"

And, not _entirely_ against his will, Ratchet felt himself relax.

"So can I help?"

"Probably not."

"I was asking _Ratchet_, 'Hauler."

"Long Haul's answer was probably accurate." Hook's tone was crisp, but somehow more relaxed than it had been: Ratchet hadn't heard the tension, but now he could hear the absence of it.

"So, _Ratchet,_ is there anything I can do?"

"…Probably not."

--End chapter 6--

A/N: So, a short chapter, but hopefully an emotionally momentous one?

Thank you very much to all my readers, for putting up with me! (I **am **getting better about updating, though.)


	7. Chapter 7

**Sheer Dumb Luck**  
Part 7

By Dreaming of Everything, betaed by Mmouse15

* * *

Long Haul looked downright stormy as he waited for Ratchet just inside the entrance to the base. It gave him a brief thrill of fear as he pulled up—had something gone wrong…?

"Something's come up. There's arrows pointing to the med bay—don't give _me_ that look, Scavenger put them up. I'll catch you later."

And then he was gone, accelerating away, leaving behind a bemused Ratchet, who hesitantly drove inside.

Sure enough, there were arrows. _At least they know how hard it is to maneuver in this labyrinthine rat's-nest they've built,_ Ratchet thought as he finally slipped into the med bay. He was shocked, briefly, to find it empty, until realism set in and he remembered that the Constructicons always—_always_—had someone on monitor duty. He waved absentmindedly at the camera mounted in one corner before turning to his work. He hadn't gotten nearly as far as he'd wanted to, the last time he'd been to the base to work, and he'd need to make up for that—

He worked uninterrupted for hours, utterly absorbed, until he was interrupted by a private comm.

'_Ratchet?'_

'_Scrapper. What is it?'_

'_I need to go. Don't try to reenter the base until one of use gets back in touch with you; there won't be anybody here to deactivate the internal defenses. You should be fine once you exit, though, if you stick to the roads. I hope to get in touch with you in a few days.'_

—Within a few days. _Hopefully_. Ratchet tried to damp down his suspicions about that involving going after Autobots.

'—_Be careful.'_ Scrapper's mental tone was slightly worried.

He was stunned. Maybe it wasn't Autobots. He knew there was no love lost between the Constructicons and their faction. Would they actually engage in a fight with them? Or worry that a fight would be started? There was a good chance humans would end up dead if there was a conflict started, unintentionally if not purposefully. There had been almost a hundred deaths at Mission City: only three had been Decepticons—not four, he knew now—and only one had been an Autobot. All the rest had been human...

Or maybe their 'something' _was_ Autobots, and Scrapper had warned him not to get caught helping them. The rules regarding how traitors were dealt with were clear, and strict.

He had work to do. He had the rest of the night off, after all, and he was going to take advantage of that.

He'd been working another hour when he glanced at the camera again. He wondered if Scrapper had been telling the truth when he said there was no one else there. That made no sense. And yet—

* * *

At least the walls were still marked with arrows: if they hadn't been there, he would have found it impossible to get through the slagging maze that made up the excuse for a base.

Ratchet hesitated before he left, wondering how long it would take them to get back in contact with him, then forced the matter out of his mind. Worrying wouldn't do anything.

* * *

It had been four days. He needed something to concentrate on, something to keep his mind occupied, but he didn't know what.

There hadn't been anything suspicious in the news.

* * *

Five days.

* * *

Six.

* * *

A full week.

He needed to just let it go.

* * *

Ratchet had been in recharge, but one of his scans had woken him up with an alert.

An approaching Decepticon energy signal.

It only took a few minutes to slip out of town, speeding a short ways into the dark desert: it was a few minutes before three in the morning, and the light from almost-full moon was blocked out by thick clouds, unusual—abnormal—in the desert.

Ratchet pulled to a halt and transformed, the noise magnified in the empty silence. As it faded, he could pick up the sounds of tires crunching over the desert, and he thought about damping down his energy signal, then figured it was too late. At least the tires meant it wasn't Starscream. It could be Barricade, the only other Decepticon from Mission City still alive, though, or it could be any new arrival—

"Ratchet?"

That was a _familiar_ voice. He relaxed. "Scavenger. What—"

"_You need to come._ It was Starscream—he found us—and it wouldn't be too bad but he had the rest of his wing with him. And it's Mixmaster—he got hit wrong, it broke some of the storage compartments he has built into him, for his chemicals—"

Ratchet cursed fiercely. "That's why it's such a stupid idea to keep that sort of thing _inside_ you— How far away?"

"From here? An hour at my top speed."

Which was less than Ratchet's. "Give me the coordinates."

He was in motion before they finished transferring.

* * *

Ratchet was grateful for the rain as it pounded down on the six of them—not because it was pleasant—the way it dripped its way under armor plates most definitely wasn't, but because it was doing something to dilute the reaction that was eating away Mixmaster's internals.

Who the _slag_ was stupid enough to carry around that much acid?

Mixmaster, apparently. And this was the end result: a hit from a Decepticon—from _another_ Decepticon—in the wrong place, cracking one compartment open which broke through some of the other near-by chemical stores and weakened the rest so a second hit let all hell loose—

There wasn't even enough water to wash everything away. It would have taken some body of water big enough to dump the mech, who was by no means small, into bodily, and this was the Mojave desert…

Ratchet had had to make due by counteracting it with a strong base chemical he'd had on hand. Now, he was waiting for the reaction to run its course, and hoping that nothing had been too badly damaged.

He didn't think about _why_ he was helping them. They hadn't asked him for his reasons—so far, at least. Because this was outside what he'd agreed to do.

The reaction was starting to subside. Ratchet added a little more of the base he was using and tried to agitate the mixture with an inert rod, stirring gingerly. He still wasn't being careful enough, and he hissed as a drop of active acid splashed onto one hand.

"At least it looks like all the really important systems are in his head," he muttered, mostly to himself, even though he knew the four conscious Decepticons were watching (and listening) to him. "He's lost a lot of short-term memory."

"He can get it back from one of us," Scrapper offered, and Ratchet nodded. It made sense, that a gestalt was able to do that—

The sky was beginning to lighten even through the clouds—they were thinning, the rain slacking off.

"Could you tilt him to one side to help drain this off?"

Hook, Scavenger and Scrapper managed to tilt him to one side, between the three of them—one of Hook's arms was nonfunctional, and Mixmaster outweighed all of them. That left Ratchet to try and help bail out the deepest puddles. It left his hands coated with a thin layer of acid, not enough to be an immediate problem but enough to prickle—he'd need to wash them thoroughly later, as soon as he had the time and the water, but for now the only damage was to paint and the finish on the metal, purely cosmetic—

Ratchet looked up again. "Is there any way at all to get water here? A lot of it."

"I'll try," Scavenger said, which didn't surprise Ratchet at all. He was the one in the best shape, out of all of them—most of the damage was to his sensors, his spikes—or maybe 'antenna' was a better analogy—which would be excruciatingly painful unless he could dull the feedback from them.

Long Haul made as if to follow him, but Hook reached out a tired hand and pulled him back down. Scrapper left instead. None of them said a word.

Ratchet turned away from the unconscious chemist, unable to do much more, and was hit with the in-your-face electrical charge he'd come to associate with heavy energon loss.

"Who _else_ is hurt?" he demanded. "And when where you planning on telling me? Sometime after you keeled over in emergency stasis lock?"

"It's not too bad," said Long Haul immediately.

"_Yes_, it is. Don't even think about telling me I'm wrong—I am a medic. _I_ am a medic—_you_ are not." He paused momentarily. "What are you waiting for? _Lie down._" Maybe it was the snarl, or his position of power (because he _was_ a medic, after all) or because of everything he'd done for them or simply a reflection of Long Haul's weakened state, but he obeyed him without a word.

Ratchet didn't let that faze him, kneeling next to the prostrate mech to investigate the damage. There was very little—comparatively speaking—visible damage, certainly not enough to explain the huge energon loss. The dust around him was dark and compacted, heavy with shed fluids.

"I'm going to jack into your system, okay? Take down as many firewalls as you can."

Again, Ratchet was surprised by the level of compatibility he had with all the Constructicons he'd hooked up to—it had to be a gestalt thing, to facilitate the six (in this case) minds combining. This time, he was relieved—it was much, _much_ easier to run diagnostics when you weren't fighting the mech at the same time. The relief was enough to completely overpower the unease that was invoked by feeling so comfortable with a Decepticon.

Although it had been feeling more and more normal, as time went on.

Ratchet pulled out quickly once he'd identified the damaged areas, realizing the urgency.

"You're good at that," said Long Haul, sounding surprised. "That didn't hurt at all."

Hurt? You had to be a truly bad match and a completely insensitive and unpracticed medic for a basic diagnostic scan to _hurt_. Maybe he'd been wrong about the gestalt mind making things easier—or the Decepticons just had truly awful medics.

"He's having trouble concentrating," Hook said quietly.

"Slag! Long Haul, I'm going to shut you down for a while. You've lost too much energon; there's a leak in your central reserve. It'll help you conserve energy."

"Okay."

"—Alright. You know, it's a good thing you're one of the ones who get calm with energy loss..." He pinched the necessary wires, turning off Long Haul's higher functions.

"He's usually not," said Hook. "He usually gets unreasonable and angry with energon deprivation."

"Then we're lucky. Can you open up his core energy circuit while I—_who's that?_" Ratchet spun around as he caught the approaching Decepticon energy signal, combined with the noise of an engine running hard.

"Scavenger. He's got water."

"—Good. _Good_. Open up the main energon store and pump—tear the armor off if you have to—while I take care of Mixmaster. Most of the damage to him is best handled by self-repair systems, except for lost data, and that's up to you. I can repair the damage to the storage spaces faster than his personal systems, but that needs to wait—or it _can_ wait, and it'll be much easier, later—"

"I understand."

"Good. _Scavenger!_ Thank you—here." Ratchet _really_ didn't think about how the Constructicon had gotten a hold of the bottles of water, just putting the matter aside. _Pretend it's Smokescreen,_ he told himself, cracking open the first bottle and pouring it over the downed Decepticon.

He was careful to rinse the body cavity perfectly clean before he moved on to his own hands.

At last he turned back to Long Haul, sitting down on the other side of him, across from Hook.

The damage wasn't hard to repair: it was just welding shut the cracks in his main energon pump and cavity. The problem was all the energy that had been lost already. "Scavenger. Go back to the base and bring me back five basic rations of purified energon—please."

"Okay. And do you need more water? Scrapper found some too."

"Yes—thank you." Ratchet was only half paying attention.

"Great—"

Ratchet fumbled his way back into Long Haul's system, and winced at the myriad of urgent warnings. They didn't have _time_. "I need to run a transfusion. Keep Mixmaster offline until I'm back up, and give me some energon once it's available, or regular unprocessed fuel if you want to save it. I—"

"You're taking it from your own system?" Ratchet had the distinct feeling that he'd managed to honestly shock Hook for the first time.

"Yes, you're injured. Once Scrapper gets here with water, finish rinsing Mixmaster off, but be careful—there's a good chance that a lot of his structure's been weakened. And I might be out for a while—my fuel levels aren't all that good right now. Force me up if it's a real emergency."

Hook protested, but Ratchet ignored him, focused on finishing up the repairs—there wasn't much sense in giving an energon feed when it would all just leak out again.

Ten minutes later he finished repairs. Five minutes past that, he passed out.

--End chapter 7--

(We're halfway there!)


	8. Chapter 8

**Sheer Dumb Luck**  
Part 8

By Dreaming of Everything, betaed by mmouse15

(A quick author's note: so far this fic has been fairly tame. This is the point where that changes. It is definitely an M-rated chapter.)

* * *

When Ratchet came to he felt distinctly out of it, and the way he was staring at an unfamiliar ceiling didn't help. The fact that he _could_ stare at the ceiling—that is, that he was in his root mode—was cause for alarm in and of itself.

It was distinctly unnerving. He had no recollection whatsoever of how he'd ended up—

A brief movement had him turning and loosing off a shot in the general direction of the movement, on nerves alone. He froze for a second as his processor identified 'Decepticon'—the build was unmistakably _not Autobot_—and then relaxed suddenly as he recognized Hook. _That_ was where he was, on the Constructicon base. He'd given a good portion of his energon to Long Haul to replace what the larger mech had lost—apparently more than he'd readily been able to spare—

Ratchet froze again as he realized he'd just _shot at _Hook. Amazingly, incredibly, he hadn't been attacked in return.

He met the other's gaze. "…Sorry?"

"Considering the circumstances, I'll forgive you. How are you?"

"—Good, when all's said and done. And considering the circumstances. Where are Mixmaster and Long Haul?"

"Med bay."

"Where are _we?_"

"My room."

Huh. He hadn't thought about what their living quarters would look like… Hook's, at least, was totally bare, except for a small table with a single datapad resting on it.

"Why am I here?"

"You were less likely to be woken up—everyone else is in the med bay. Long Haul and Mixmaster—and Bonecrusher, of course, although he's not really present yet, is he?—are there by necessity, and Scrapper's there to keep them in order. Scavenger's there for the company, which leaves me. I was charged with watching you, and I figured it would be easier here."

"Um, thank you. What day is it?"

"You were out for just over twenty-seven hours."

Good. It could have been a lot worse, Ratchet knew. Oddly, he found himself surprised by the news that the Constructicons apparently didn't sleep in one big crowd—given the amount of physical contact they all indulged in.

"Alright. Where's the medbay from here?"

"I'll show you—we're close."

"Thank you." Ratchet lurched to his feet, taking a minute to stabilize—his systems were still feeling the effects of the energy drain, even though some of what he'd lost had been replaced. He didn't miss the way Hook reached out a set of hands, wanting to stabilize him, offer support—that was weird. Maybe it was just another extension of the tactile nature they all had. That made sense: now that he wasn't irrevocably _the enemy_, it got harder to control their bizarre gestalt-born tendencies.

Although Hook did not strike him as having a particularly open personality when it came to that sort of thing.

* * *

Long Haul had onlined again, probably naturally—he hadn't been bad off, after Ratchet's repairs had finished, and his gestalt mates would have supplemented his energy levels, doubtlessly. Mixmaster, Ratchet was happy to see, was still unconscious—he was a different matter altogether, of secondary importance at the moment. He was in a considerably more stable state than Long Haul had the potential to be.

"How are you feeling?" Ratchet demanded briskly as he walked up next to the mech.

"Fine. Can I leave?"

"What?"

"Can. I. Leave. _Please_."

"…After I run a diagnostic."

"Oh, _slag._"

"Two minutes either way won't make that much of a difference. Stay still!"

The scan didn't even take two minutes. It finished barely thirty seconds later. "Okay, there, you're free to go. Keep your energon levels extremely high—that's not a recommendation. Don't dip below ninety percent reserves, and ninety-five percent is better."

Ratchet watched the Decepticon leave, and then turned to Mixmaster. He'd been wondering, vaguely, where the other two Decepticons were—Bonecrusher was still on his table, and Hook had gone to the comm. room—since Hook had said that they were in the med bay: he was relieved to catch sight of them, leaning against each other with their backs to the wall, recharging.

Apparently he'd been partially right—_some_ of them, at least, liked to sleep with someone else there.

But that was neither here nor there. He double-checked the progress of Mixmaster's systems, but it looked like his internal repair systems were working remarkably quickly: he was very happy with the result. Nothing had been too badly damaged, beyond the short-term memory storage, and they'd already figured out an answer to that—

Speaking of which. Technically, there was nothing to stop him from rebooting him then and there, but it would probably be best to wait until one of his gestaltmates were there. After all, Ratchet had just woken up confused enough to attack Hook—and having an enraged Mixmaster going after him, even if just for a few seconds, wasn't something Ratchet wanted; it could also cause more damage, if he wasn't careful enough in his movements—

Ratchet sat down instead, trying to enjoy the downtime.

That lasted for less than two minutes, before Ratchet found himself facing Bonecrusher's body again, welder in hand.

After all, he had work to do.

* * *

Ratchet was the one to online Mixmaster again, carefully sending a brief electric pulse through the right wires, jumpstarting the proper systems, so Ratchet was the first sight Mixmaster saw as he came back to consciousness.

"Aut-tobot," he identified, sounding remarkably calm.

"Er, yes," Ratchet replied, glad that he wasn't being shot at—yet, at least. "State your designation."

"Mixmaster. Ob-viously. 'Crusher?"

"Still in bad shape. The others are fine, though—_you're_ fine, which is something of a miracle. We are going to have a _talk_."

"Why-y woul-d y-ou t-t-t-alk with me, Aut-to—"

"Calm down," Hook said carefully, stepping forward. He ran gentle fingers along one of Mixmaster's arms, not even trying to disguise the gesture as casual, obviously relieved. "You lost your short-term memory—this is Ratchet, he's patching Bonecrusher back together. He also saved _your_ life. And Long Haul's."

"I wouldn't _need_ to if he had an ounce of common sense—"

Ratchet's sentence was derailed by the sight of Hook casually accepting a cable from Mixmaster, handing one of his own over in return, then the two of them initiating in the tie—

They were _interfacing_. Or something slagging close to it.

_So _that_ was how they transferred memories back and forth. Of course. So they got the memories in the first place through a combination of bond and interface—or maybe combiner form, when they were whole—and they were preserved as individual thoughts through the gestalt mind, which could then be moved back to the originator if they lost their copy of the data…_

Ratchet turned away and ignored how Scavenger was clearly distracted, probably picking up feedback, and how Scrapper had just shuddered at the feel of a phantom data transfer, at how Long Haul was utterly still—

_Apparently all the rumors about gestalt bonds were true._

Ratchet was leaving the room, headed for the outside if not actually going back to town—the one place he knew how to find, because Scavenger's arrows were still up—when he heard his name and paused.

"Ratchet. Thank you."

The four-fold echo was unnerving, in a familiar way. Their voices fit together.

* * *

"Hey Ratchet!" Scavenger said loudly, sliding into the room. His sensor spikes were raised high, flaring out in a fan around his head and bristling along his back.

"Scavenger. You're looking better—your, ah, spikes looked partially damaged."

"What, my sensors? Oh, they heal fast. And Hook looked them over."

Ratchet frowned. "Would you mind if I looked over them? Sensors can be tricky—if something went wrong with the self-heal function, it could have ramifications."

"What? Sure—here." There wasn't a hint of shyness in any part of the Decepticon's demeanor as he moved closer, leaning over as he pressed his side into Ratchet, giving the medic full access to his back.

Ratchet decided to ignore the way his tail had curled around his leg, and bent to examine a spine, running sensitive fingers down it, rotating it slightly—though it was obvious that it responded to Scavenger's moods, it could be moved manually by him, as well, it wasn't locked into place. After a minute he turned to another, carefully noting the electrical impulses and how they varied in different areas—everything _seemed_ to be working fine, at least—

"Ratchet?" Scavenger said, unexpectedly quiet and voice strained, somehow. "If—Do I need to dampen my sensitivity for this?"

"What?" Ratchet said, and only then he caught the way Scavenger's engine was working, body vibrating slightly, subliminally, with the increased force of it, and the way the mech was leaning into his inquisitive fingers, arching against them. "Oh! I'm sorry, yes, it's fine if you cut it off almost entirely—"

"Don't be sorry," said Scavenger abruptly, straightening but not moving away, leaning into the medic; Ratchet hadn't realized how much taller the other mech was. Then, abruptly, he changed topics: "You're saving Bonecrusher, and you saved Mixmaster and Long Haul."

He felt uncomfortable. "Long Haul probably would have survived—"

"You _saved_ them." His tone was fierce. "So—you—should—" Scavenger ran determined fingers along a seam in Ratchet's armor, engine running even more fiercely, the vibrations carrying over into the other's frame. "I want to _thank_ you—because you—"

That was downright alarming. He tried to back up, but Scavenger pressed an arm around him. "You don't owe me a thing and, really, this isn't so much a thank-you as it is—"

"Interfacing? Oh. That's just because I want to. Partly because you're helping us—you're— It's not because I think I need to, it's that you would, you _have_, and so you're someone I'd want to 'face with. But I do want to say thanks. So: thank you." He probed a finger further into Ratchet, sending a brief flick of electricity dancing over a bunch of sensory nerves, making the mech jolt a little, his own engine rumbling to life.

"…Why me? And I'm an _Autobot_, Scavenger."

"No, not really—you're Ratchet. Kind of like I don't think of myself as a Decepticon the way I think of myself as Scavenger, or Devastator. It's just a job description. And you've _helped_ us." His tones were hushed with happy respect. "And you're nice—and interesting. You're not always nasty. You apologized once." This time, he released a brief crackle of electricity from a sensor-spike Ratchet was holding, the energy snapping to his hand, and he shuddered at the sensation.

"—Fine," Ratchet said. "If you—want it." He shouldn't be interfacing a Decepticon, but—

But it was Scavenger, who wasn't really a Decepticon, or _just_ a Decepticon. And an overload didn't mean much more than friendship, or at least enough trust for physical intimacy, depending on how it was undertaken...

Scavenger brightened, and backed up, giving Ratchet more space, moving back into the hunched-over position, facing him this time. Hesitantly, the medic ran a finger along one of the sensors on his head, and Scavenger made a needy noise, then spoke. "Is there—somewhere on you?"

"Nowhere particularly. My hands…"

Scavenger brightened, turning immediately to grab one of the digits, turning it over in his hands, observing. Ratchet wasn't expecting it when he produced another wave of energy, bringing him to his knees, joining the other, and then forcing him to lean on him when he repeated it, optics blurring momentarily with the feedback.

"Tell me how I do, 'kay? I'm not used to this with someone who's not one of us."

Ratchet snorted. "You're ridiculous—you know exactly what you're doing. You—ohhh…"

"Okay, maybe I do—but I'm a _Decepti_con, right?" He smiled unashamedly, then pointedly moved the hand he was holding back to a sensor. Ratchet shifted so his arms went around the mech, his other hand joining the other, forcing Scavenger to hunch a little to make up for the differences in their height, and smirked once his face was hidden from the other's view. He wasn't the only one who had a few tricks—he let one hand start to vibrate, a low hum, with a quick modification of what he used for the saw, then pressed a single finger to one of the spikes, deliberately.

He… Honestly, he liked the way that made Scavenger jerk against him, armor scraping against armor and the other reduced to a low, static Cybertronian babble. He pulled the finger away again, and Scavenger made a low, annoyed noise.

Ratchet made up for it by deliberately tugging the wire his other hand had singled out—he could just barely see it, with the position his head was in, but he could see enough to figure out which ones were primarily for pleasure and which for pain. It worked a little differently than it did on Autobot designs, but Ratchet had gotten good at telling the difference, working on Bonecrusher—

Scavenger responded with a sudden flare of his personal energy field, warm against Ratchet's nerves where it got through his layer of armor, brushing his neural nets. Ratchet was reduced to speechlessness and his grasp tightened convulsively around the other, something Scavenger seemed to like almost as much as deliberate manipulation of pleasure sensors.

"Can we— Link up?" asked the other hopefully. "I can't feel you—it's weird."

Gestalts, Ratchet had decided, were weird, but he could understand the need, if it was what he was used to.

"Give me time to put up firewalls." It wouldn't take more than a few minutes. To fill them up, Ratchet tried scraping one head spike against the other—which Scavenger didn't actually seem to like. He tried wrapping a purposefully overheated hand over it instead, and felt gratified by the response.

Then Scavenger was handing him a cable—a hardline—and Ratchet accepted. He had firewalls cutting off anything important, Autobot secrets—he handed the other his own, and shuddered as he clicked the port into place. The reaction was immediate, a flood, a roaring ocean of data—it abated as Scavenger completed the circuit, and the immediate effects of feeling exactly what he'd been doing to his partner flooded his systems, along with the acknowledgment of what he'd done for them, for the Constructicons as a group, and there was also the feeling of their minds _fitting_ together, a match that let everything sync—he was still himself but he could feel what being Scavenger was, could feel the other's thoughts and happiness and, yes, what he was feeling—

He made the conscious effort to move his own body and ran his hand down another sensor, gripping the base of it, firmly—he liked having such an easy way to create a reaction, to make him _feel_—

Scavenger's mental presence flowed into his, searching, and Ratchet let him, bemused, and the surge of emotion when he found the fierce, odd fondness that Ratchet had for the Constructicons, it sent him spiraling out of consciousness and into pure sensation, then nothingness.

--End chapter 8--

(Edited 5-26-09. Thank you for pointing out the error, Carmilla DeWinter and Okami_Myrrhibis!)


	9. Chapter 9

**Sheer Dumb Luck**

Part 9

By Dreaming of Everything, betaed by mmouse15

(Everyone should go and check out the absolutely _incredible_ fanart Neurquadic drew of Scavenger for me! It is just about the coolest thing ever! You can find it linked at the bottom of my profile page here at FFnet, or at neurquadic (dot) deviantart (dot) com (slash) art (slash) Sheer-Dumb-Luck-Scavenger-124580759.)

(Also, sorry about the short chapter. Next chapter will be longer, I promise! Also, more interesting, if you know what I mean. And I bet you do.)

**This story is and will not be canon-compliant with Revenge of the Fallen.**

_Edited 7/5/09 to change 'bought' to 'bout'--thank you, anon_decepticon!_

* * *

It was over.

He had less than two hours of work left to do to Bonecrusher: just reattaching and reactivating removed or dormant systems, running the final scan and then hooking up the spark; it had stabilized nicely.

It was highly unlikely that his final double-check would find anything wrong: Ratchet was a very competent medic, and he'd done his best. He'd done everything he'd been able to think of, for Bonecrusher's long term and short term health—

Ratchet turned as he caught the sound of footsteps, but not out of unease or nerves—he was simply curious. He felt comfortable with all five of the other mechs—even Mixmaster. Somehow, the edginess, the stress, had gotten set aside.

(He was a little more than friendly with one of them. How_ had_ that happened? Why wasn't he worried that Scavenger would show up again—he should be worried, for two reasons: the potential awkwardness, and the potential of another bout of interfacing. It wasn't _right._)

"Hey," Long Haul said gruffly, drifting in. Ratchet suppressed a smile at the characteristically sulky greeting—it was familiar, no longer anything like insulting. He understood, more or less.

"Hello. Would you mind bringing me Bonecrusher's shoulder armor?"

Long Haul made a noise of surprise, and the medic looked up again.

"What?"

"You're almost done? Already?"

"I'll finish today." Ratchet tried to keep his voice neutral. "And what do mean, 'already?' It's been a minor eternity. I almost never take this long to complete repairs." Which wasn't strictly true—it had taken far longer than he was used to, yes, but the time had gone quickly, despite everything that had happened, that had changed.

"So this is it." Long Haul sounded—happy, content.

"Yes." In contrast, Ratchet knew he sounded, despite his efforts, angry and defensive.

"You won't have to keep on coming here."

"No, I won't."

"Bonecrusher'll function fine." That was why he sounded so uncharacteristically _joyful_: they would be complete again. All they wanted, all they really asked for.

"Yes. There's a slight chance that there will be further problems or complications—there always is—but it's very low."

"What happens if there _is_ a problem?"

"You'll need to find a medic."

"We know where to find _you_. ...If there's a problem, are you going to fix it?"

Ratchet paused, then answered very quietly. "Maybe. _If_ you catch me on a good day."

"Thanks." Long Haul's voice was soft.

"Hmph. I haven't agreed to anything yet—now, would you_ hand me that armor?_ I haven't got all day. I'm on shift later."

* * *

All five Constructicons were present for the reactivation. Somehow, it felt—appropriate, even though Ratchet usually preferred to do the most complicated work without observation.

They'd all wandered in as he progressed, an apparent coincidence. He was sure it wasn't, even if having all five there wasn't anything out of the ordinary. Ratchet couldn't have protested, even if he'd wanted to, and he was pretty sure he didn't: he was finally done, their sixth agonizingly close to fully repaired. He _couldn't_ protest.

Bonecrusher's body was intact again, not a wire out of place, in better condition than he'd been in before he had (to all extents and purposes) died—in better condition than he'd been in for some time before that.

The only thing really missing was the spark.

Scavenger shifted uneasily, tail stirring against the floor in a brief, unsettling shiver.

Carefully, Ratchet opened up the spark chamber again, the process just as seamless—more so—than it had been the first time. (This was the end to everything, mirroring what had happened at the start of all this.) He'd waited to start the security programs just for this, and almost everything else was running, or ready to start, automatically, as soon as the spark was reattached.

It was time.

Ratchet was careful as he moved the spark, still not wanting to damage—or damage to a further extent—anything so important—and so fragile. There were still contaminants, although most of them had been expelled over the past weeks, something that had surprised Ratchet but given him hope—

He thought again about how likely it was that Bonecrusher would be someone different when he onlined fully. No one—no one _ever_, as far as Ratchet knew—had ever survived this kind of damage. The long-range effects—there was no saying. The rest of his gestalt was confident that he was still the same mech: somehow, Ratchet found _that_ comforting, too. Even though he had no reason to.

_First, situate the spark chamber without removing the isolation valves_. Ratchet risked a glance at the Decepticons. Mixmaster was shaking slightly.

_Second, attach the necessary wires._ He wasn't used to this level of tension when he was with them. It was setting him on edge. It wouldn't be a problem again—

_Third, manually attach a second-level energon line to the spark chamber and open the line._ A few more systems hummed to life, and the noise was almost painfully loud in the dead-silent room.

_Fourth, initiate the transformation on the aligned isolation valves and check for leaks. Weld the primary lines as a failsafe._ This time, Ratchet didn't sneak another glance. He could still hear the creak of metal against metal, someone clenching a fist or holding someone else too tightly.

_Fifth and sixth, close the chamber and activate all involuntary systems_. Everything was working correctly._ Seventh, wait_.

"He'll be fully online within seventy-two hours. It's done."

And it was.

He'd never seen the other five all so obviously happy, which made sense. Now Bonecrusher was back in his body, they probably had a much clearer sense of him through their gestalt bond. That would grow over the course of the next few days as he approached full functionality—it was a matter of hours, now.

"Hook—I left a list of instructions, warnings and expected progress. Scrapper, Mixmaster, Long Haul, Scavenger—good bye. I'm needed at the fire station."

He left to a chorus of distracted good-byes and made his way to the entrance. He barely needed the arrows still painted on the walls.

--End chapter 9--

(...I'm so sorry. If it helps, this isn't the end?)


	10. Chapter 10

**Sheer Dumb Luck**  
Part 10

By Dreaming of Everything, betaed by mmouse15

* * *

Ratchet showed back up approximately fifteen hours later, feeling distinctly embarrassed. He was met on the road by Hook, and ungraciously opened up a comm. link between them when he was pinged with the nonverbal request.

"What is it?" he was asked.

"I forgot my tools." Ratchet's tone was harsh: embarrassment made him annoyed. The slight humor in Hook's voice, almost unrecognizable it was so faint, only made things worse.

"I see. If you can wait for an hour Long Haul can help you transport."

"Fine." Ratchet's voice was resigned: he really couldn't manage to transport everything he had by himself, and there would be the typical problems of then _stowing_ those materials once they arrived.

The Autobot followed the Decepticon as they reached an entrance—not the one he was used to, not one he'd used at all. The unfamiliarity threw him off, and he didn't realize that they hadn't headed for the med bay until they stopped outside Hook's room. Hook slipped inside and picked up a small stack of datapads before saying a word of explanation. "I needed to pick these up," he said simply. "I hope you don't mind."

"Sure." It wasn't like Ratchet had anything better to do.

And it still felt—odd, to know that Hook had a room. One he'd seen—recharged in once, even. It wasn't that it was all that unusual, but the Decepticon struck him as intensely, possibly to the point of paranoid, private. He was certainly obsessive.

Not that it mattered.

The med bay wasn't far from the room, and Ratchet found himself happy to be back in familiar territory. He'd spent a lot of time in the place.

—Although he shouldn't feel like he was on _home ground_ at all, not on a Decepticon base. Or at least, that's what he'd always thought. Somehow, he didn't feel like he was doing anything wrong—

Except for deceiving his teammates and commanding officer, all of them friends.

Ratchet wandered over to Bonecrusher's still form, briefly checking that nothing had gone wrong, but he was suddenly aware that there was someone inside the body he'd been working on, now, somebody—some Decepticon—he didn't know. Even the borrowed memories he still had—and he really needed to delete all of them, or most of them, now this, _all_ this, was ended—were fuzzy, blurred by time and distance. They were doubtlessly still strong for Hook and Scrapper, the ones he'd taken them from, but second-hand…

"Nothing's wrong?"

"No, everything's fine." Ratchet could feel an uneasy silence building, and was relieved as Scrapper walked in, smiling at him a little sheepishly.

"Sorry I didn't think to remind you about what you'd brought, yesterday."

"You had a lot on your mind." The sentence was phrased so that it served as reminder—for everyone—of who Ratchet was, of the fact that he was, inarguably, undeniably and unchangeably, an outsider.

"But you've done a lot for us."

Ratchet couldn't quite hide his surprise at Scrapper's words—was he telling him that he was of higher importance to them than he'd figured? That made no sense.

He was going to ignore it.

"Here," Ratchet said instead, holding out the welder they'd made him.

"Keep it."

"We certainly don't have any use for it," added Hook, curling a hand demonstratively. Their builds were too different.

"Alright, then. Thank you."

"I already told you: don't thank me, I didn't make it for you."

"_We_ made it," Hook corrected pointedly, but Ratchet ignored him. There was an odd—challenge to Scrapper's voice...

"But you're still giving it to me," he said quietly. "Which you didn't need to do. Even if you don't need the welder, it's still a gift. Even making it at all—didn't Scavenger tell you that I didn't really need it? It still made things go a little faster, but mostly it just made things less frustrating. For _me_." Ratchet paused. "Even if it wasn't meant for me, I was the one who used it."

Scrapper smiled suddenly. "Maybe you're right. But if that's the case, isn't you helping Bonecrusher—us—just as much of a gift?"

Ratchet set down the scalpel he'd been holding as he searched for the correct box in his toolkit. "So what you're asking is, 'Is a gift not freely given a gift?' I'd— Or a gift grudgingly given. I suppose you win this time." His engine raced briefly, a sign of frustration. "You're welcome. I'm…"

He stopped, waiting so long that Scrapper almost thought he wasn't going to continue.

"I'm not sorry I helped."

"Good," said Scrapper lightly, pushing his stool away from the table he'd sat down at with a scraping noise, and walking lightly, measuredly, over to him. He stood slightly too close to the other mech. "Does that mean I can thank you properly?"

"Depends," said Ratchet warily, leaning back. "Is it going to end up like how Scavenger 'thanked' me?"

"Probably," Scrapper said, steel backing the soft words. "In the root of things, at least—on the most basic level." He held a hand out, fingers almost brushing Ratchet's side but not quite touching, and waited.

And waited. Ratchet realized, belatedly, that the matter was in his hands: it was up to him. And somehow that made up his mind for him.

"Fine. You're welcome."

Scrapper moved his hand away, surprisingly. Ratchet _looked_ at him.

"You don't want to go somewhere more private?"

"What? You're a gestalt. Someone feels like watching, they going to, aren't they? Possibly even if they don't, for all I know."

"Good answer." And then he was being pushed down to the floor, Scrapper kneeling next to him, eyes sharp.

"You know, the greatest work of art is the Cybertronian body. _That_ is what I am trying to replicate when I create. …And you. You can repair those works of art. You're part of it."

Ratchet shuddered as the mech placed a single deliberate hand on his shoulder, hyperaware of the contact.

"The height of functionality, the _definition_, paired with beauty—"

"Now you're being ridiculous," Ratchet said, interrupting. "I am many things, but not particularly beautiful."

"Quiet," Hook announced from across the room, then stood and walked over. He placed a foot on Ratchet's chassis, supporting most of his weight but letting Ratchet take enough for the threat to be tangible.

_It figures he's the kinky one,_ Ratchet thought, but he obeyed.

"—The definition of functionality, paired with beauty," Scrapper continued smoothly. "The ideal to strive towards, knowing you'll never reach it. I try too, with my creations. It's a pale imitation, even our greatest successes: do you know Crystal City? I still consider it one of more inspired works. But it's still nothing. _Nothing_. What you do is so much greater, in a way… Do you see the beauty in the bodies you repair, Ratchet?"

"Yes—" He thought about continuing, but didn't. He assumed he'd made the right choice when Hook removed his foot, sinking to sit down beside him, so the two Decepticons were flanking him, one on either side.

"So… You know what I'm doing when I do—this?" He'd carefully shifted his fingers into the shoulder socket, just managing to get the tips of his fingers to brush against a row of neural sensors. Ratchet almost screamed at the sensation, the sudden intensity of touch after its absence.

"Answer," Hook said shortly when Ratchet failed to reply, still trying to stabilize his processor from the feedback.

"You—agitated the 'spine,' or primary line, of the upper left medic-standard neural network, sector seventy-six subline five, sending data through the primary sector seven-six neural cluster which gathers to the primary sensor cable leading to my central processor—ah—!"

"I'm jealous," Scrapper said softly, working his fingers back out of the seam in the armor. He took up Ratchet's hands instead, one in each of his own, and placed them on his chassis. "You know how I work. You could take me apart and put me back together again."

Ratchet sat up, tired of playing the doll. "I think _not_. That would be—uninteresting. There are better ways to utilize medical knowledge, you know."

"Show me," Scrapper said, looking happy again. "Prove it."

"Give me your hand. You too, Hook." Ratchet himself produced a pair of pliers, which he put aside momentarily. He took the nearest hand—one of Hook's—and ran his fingers over it, pretending not to notice the shiver that caused—he had sensitive hands. Good. It didn't take Ratchet long to find the primary sensory cord, even with its unfamiliar placement on the alien design, and then it was a simple matter to tear out a single wire, pulling it through a gap in the armor. He also didn't miss the way jerking the wire out made Hook's engine rumble, the moment of pain arousing. –That wasn't somewhere he was interested in going.

He repeated his actions with one of Scrapper's hands before he spoke.

"Most mechs are only aware of a hardline connection, when it comes to forming temporary ties. A fair number of medics are aware of the _theory_ behind simply connecting two sensory systems, but they're also aware that it's largely ineffective on a feasible scale." He drew the two wires closer, so they were almost touching. "Your already-established connection should make this _interesting,_ though."

And it was. Ratchet smirked as he watched Scrapper seize, temporarily losing control—he'd been mostly guessing, but he'd guessed right, which was what mattered. The theory had been sound.

"Not fair," Hook murmured into one audio, reaching out to grip him with all four arms, possessively. "You didn't feel that."

"Then make it up to me. You_ were_ the ones insisting I—"

The sudden expansion of Scrapper's energy field made him lose speech, fire racing along his nerves and veins, warmth filling him. The way Hook shuddered around him—and then Scrapper tried it again, syncing it with Hook, and Ratchet couldn't help but moan, a low babble of static. He was almost painfully aware of the other two engines pressed against him, their vibrations.

Ratchet pushed his own energy field out in a quick pulse before the other two had the chance to react, slipping his smaller fingers into Scrapper's armor as he did so, taking advantage of their distraction—

And they were still connected, by gestalt bond and by wire. They were close to overload, he knew, eyes overly bright—probably a lot like his own, although he couldn't tell.

"I guess Autobots only pretend they play fair," Scrapper said, voice laced over with static—he really was close to the edge, his composure cracking. Ratchet guessed Hook was just as close. "It's too bad you're outnumbered—cleverness only counts for so much." The sudden surge of the two comming him, uploading the sensations pouring through them, pushing them into his processor, was too much.

Overload hit him hard, and he only had the satisfaction of holding out a few seconds longer than the other two.

* * *

"Thank you," Ratchet said, back at the familiar shack and treeless, dusty hill that marked his material storage.

"Whatever. I _always_ end up hauling things around…"

"Maybe you should change your name, then, _Long Haul_."

"Huh." He paused. "I should go. –Goodbye."

"Goodbye," Ratchet said, and turned away to store his tools as the sound of Long Haul's engine faded into the distance.

--End chapter 10--

:D (Four chapters to go!)

(On a less happy note, if I missed anyone's review reply for the last chapter, please tell me and I'll go fix it! D: I lost track of which ones I'd done/hadn't done, and I'll be sure not to make the same mistake again--I'm sorry!)


	11. Chapter 11

**Sheer Dumb Luck**  
Part Eleven

By Dreaming of Everything, betaed by mmouse15

* * *

The past three weeks had been boring. Ratchet hadn't expected _that_. He'd known that he'd… adapted to the Constructicon presence, but he hadn't realized to what extent it had changed his life.

He hadn't always been riveted to his life and work, before, but now he very rarely found himself feeling at peace, fully. He wasn't unhappy—exactly—it was just…

He wondered how things had worked out. He hadn't heard from them, which was probably good. Definitely for the best, in the long run and in the short—

So it was likely that Bonecrusher hadn't suffered any lasting damage, that there weren't any problems with the repairs—they'd probably already left. After all, Starscream had attacked them nearby—he was likely to recheck the area, looking for them.

And Ratchet knew where their base was. And Ratchet was an Autobot.

This was the way things were _supposed_ to be. Unbreakable, indivisible factions, perfect opposites and as unmixable as oil and water—

Oil and water not mixed with soap, or any other form of cleanser, to break down the polarity—

His metaphor had gotten away from him, but it really was _better_ like this. He didn't have to think about who he was betraying (just who he had betrayed) and who he could trust (he shouldn't have needed to _think _about that) and what had gone on between him and Scavenger, then Scrapper and Hook, because it was a moment's insanity and it would pass, along with his memories of what had taken place and if—when—other Autobots arrived, maybe he'd find a partner, and that would help. More Autobots would certainly help with the isolation—even though it was necessary, logical, for them to be spread out it was lonely; but it was lonely _either way—_and maybe that would help him forget the Decepticons he'd, he'd...

He should probably tell Optimus Prime what had happened. Confess. It wouldn't make up for what he'd done, but it would help. …He'd wait until he was certain that the Constructicons were gone, even though he didn't owe them anything, not a _thing—_so it made no sense that he felt like he did.

Very little about any of this had been logical. Ratchet could live with that. It wouldn't help him explain everything that had taken place to his teammates, but…

He could live with that.

And he still wasn't sorry he'd helped them.

* * *

The next day, Ratchet recognized Mixmaster in town. The first chance he got, he headed out into the desert. He'd thought this was over…

The Decepticon followed him, of course. Ratchet waited for him to transform, then followed suit.

"Hello," he said quietly. "What are you doing here?"

Mixmaster shrugged defensively, remaining silent, his body half twisted to the side.

"Fine," Ratchet said, hiding a brief flicker of nerves—Mixmaster could be _unsettling_—and sitting down, stubborn.

A second later, his sulking was interrupted. "Fa-a-ce me."

Ratchet did, turning to see the mech holding out an interface cable leading back to his neck, looking patient and defiant.

Ratchet's mind went blank. "…Was that a _pun?_"

"Yesss."

"Oh, _Primus_." He'd never been propositioned like _that_ before. Of course, he hadn't had as many partners in the past ten thousand years as he'd had in the past month…

"Please?"

Ratchet buried his face in his hands, no idea what to do. "I… Mixmaster, I don't think this is a good ide—"

"_Hmph_. You- do no-t-t think it i-is a g-good id-e-a because you think-k I am a glit-ching lunatic-c-ic. I am not _sane_ but-t-ut-but-t-t—" He paused, clearly recollecting himself. "_But_ I a-am in con-trol of my proc-ess-ors. In the-ese matters."

Well, that stung. "I never said that! You're a _Decepticon_. That's reason enough for it to be a bad idea."

"Scavenger, Hook, Scrapper," he said simply in reply.

"_They_ were a bad idea too," Ratchet growled, looking down. A bad idea that he didn't regret, exactly. He regretted the complications, but the act itself—

"One more? Ple-ase."

"You aren't going to leave, are you."

"No."

"Why?"

Mixmaster shrugged, looking slightly frustrated, but stayed mostly quiet. "I—wa-ant –to."

There was a long pause as Ratchet thought, even though he shouldn't _need _to. "...Alright."

"Yes?"

"Yes." Ratchet half-expected to be jumped, pinned, but the mech simply took a step forward, knelt, holding his cord out to him once more, and waited.

"Alright," he repeated, reaching out to accept. The other's engine purred as he clipped it into place and handed him his own, the bond settling down in his mind as a lightning-fast blur of information in his subconscious mind, warm and subtle: there was nothing strong enough to leap out at him, yet.

Mixmaster slowly leaned back until he was flat along the ground, the attachments between them forcing Ratchet to edge closer, until he was alongside him.

Hesitantly, Ratchet ran his hands over a stretch of armor, or tried to, but the myriad of blade-like extensions made it hard. Still, Mixmaster had been designed as a scientist, and there were a higher-than-average number of tactical sensors: not enough to match the chemical ones, but enough to make a difference. Ratchet could feel the subtle shift in the current of energy between them.

He tried again, purposefully grinding hard against one of the sensitive little nodes, and it made Mixmaster twitch, vocalizer making some faint, strangled, babbled noise, and Ratchet shuddered hard as the feedback swept through him. He slid his fingers down one of the bladed struts, slipped his fingers inside the narrow opening in Mixmaster's armor it was protecting and pulled briefly on one of the wires inside it, forcing his arm to hold still as Mixmaster thrashed again, the Constructicon beneath him trembling.

"Aren't _you_ going to do something?" he whispered once he recovered, vocalizer still crackling with feedback.

"Wh-at?"

Ratchet was surprised by the surge of fear that _followed_ the words, not accompanying them, not _related_ to them, but still there, triggered by something else, and unnerving. He pushed it aside. The mech had come to him, after all...

Maybe it had been a misunderstanding. "'What?'" he repeated. "You're just lying there, letting me—poke at you. I feel the feedback, but are _you_ going to do anything?"

"O-oh." Hesitantly, he touched one of Ratchet's arms, slowly investigating the hand, touch careful, delicate, light—teasing. It would have been arousing, but that fear hadn't gone away, and it was _bothering_ Ratchet. It was the opposite of arousing, to start with.

His irritation surged as the mech carefully withdrew his hand, and he knew Mixmaster felt it, suddenly leaping back: Ratchet screamed as the line connecting them was almost disconnected, ripped out without proper termination. He missed Mixmaster's own pain as it mixed with his own until his faded, and he was suddenly being flooded with the Decepticon's thoughts and fears. Shaking, Ratchet unplugged his end of the line, then helped Mixmaster with his: his fingers were scrabbling desperately to disengage the connection, but he was shaking too badly to manage it.

Ratchet lay back once he was able to pull apart, trying to sort through the overwhelming welter of emotions and distant memories that had flooded him, pulled to the surface.

So none of Mixmaster's gestalt members were afraid of him: he'd been wrong, when he'd gotten the memories. Mostly, he was afraid of himself: of losing control. Because he _was_ glitchy, and just as badly as Ratchet's darkest suspicions had been. Possibly worse.

"Oh," he said carefully, out loud, because he _needed_ to say something. Mixmaster was still a silent, unmoving form next to him. It took him a minute to speak.

"'_Oh'_—you _stu-pid_ Aut—"

"Stick it up your exhaust pipe. Look, you want to interface,—fine, I can… _deal_ with that. But if you don't actually want to, look for it somewhere else. Most of your team members are downright horny little bastards, you can go bother them—"

"I... d-do."

"Alright, then. I don't want to plug into you if I end up getting _fear_ out of it. That's not..."

"Not-t you-u. It is n-ot _you_."

"But I'm still feeling your fear! That is _not_ arousing! It's not like you're even going to be a danger, especially here and now—especially now you have a full gestalt again. They ground you, and you _know it_."

Mixmaster was silent, the bladed extensions covering his body unusually upright—a defensive position, Ratchet realized.

"...I don't care, you realize. It's not really impacting you right now, so it's... Not an issue. It's not like you're _infectious_."

"Re-eally." Mixmaster's tone was almost sarcastic, but also almost hopeful.

"Do I have to prove it by plugging into you again?"

Mixmaster eyed him carefully, calculating. "Yes."

"...Fine," Ratchet said, and he pulled himself upright, moving closer, back towards the other mech. Mixmaster's hand moved, the movements jerky, uncoordinated, in an abortive movement towards his interface cable, but Ratchet caught his hand, held it in his own, stroked it with firm fingers. There was a squeal of metal, but they were far enough away from the tiny town that there was no one there to hear, and Mixmaster seemed to like it—it was harder, guessing like this, but it wasn't like Ratchet was _totally _unfamiliar with purely tactile stimulation.

Mixmaster eyed him.

"I don't want that happening again," Ratchet muttered, eyes downcast. He belied the words by pulling himself even closer, and pressed, delicately, at an armor seam, teasing more than actually seeking entrance. Mixmaster shuddered, the movement just as delicate, fragile—it would have been almost ludicrous, on a big mech like him, with such a Decepticon design, but somehow it—fit. Ratchet could feel his engine start to work a little harder.

Encouraged, he found a bigger gap and pressed his fingers in a little deeper, teasing at the wires hidden underneath, letting little shocks fall from his fingers, making the Decepticon—who was now almost _underneath_ him—make incoherent whimpering noises, needy ones.

When Ratchet pulled out his fingers, Mixmaster reached up to pull him closer again.

"This is better," Ratchet said, and the Decepticon stilled. "—It's not your fault, _relax._ You're not the first mech I've 'faced without a bond—" He stopped, maybe because he felt Mixmaster tense a little, but also because it was tacky to talk about past conquests—or times as the conquered—when you were with another mech.

"I want to feel you," Mixmaster whispered.

"Wait a little," Ratchet said, fingers feeling for another armor panel, and then he had to stifle his own moan as the combination of one hand scrabbling against sensor nodes and the other pressing into the wires exposed by armor gaps made Mixmaster's vocalizer buzz with static. He thrashed underneath Ratchet, pressing up against him in a wordless plea for more, _more_, and it was doing almost as much for the medic's internal temperature as actually being tied to the mech and feeling the feedback had been.

He pressed in harder, and Mixmaster ground up against him, his own hands finally moving. He pushed against Ratchet's armor, looking for sensors that weren't there, for the most part—he was a medic, not a scientist, and he'd been altered for war—before he found that brushing the edges of the lights mounted on his chest made him moan, and it was Ratchet's turn to push into the gesture, looking wordlessly for more pressure, more contact. Mixmaster's hands were still light, hesitant, not-quite-teasing in the way they moved with Ratchet's movements. It took the Autobot a moment to get his vocalizer to work—he wasn't used to talking during interface, but they weren't exchanging any data, he needed to—and Mixmaster—

"Harder," he half-whispered, demonstrating by grasping at a strut—careful to choose one strong enough to stand up to some pressure—and just barely scraping his fingers against the delicate metal, dragging the very fingertips along it, before he pushed against it more heavily. Mixmaster bucked and thrashed again, and when he was once more still (except for how he was trembling from aftershocks, Ratchet noticed, with some pride) he pushed against Ratchet's lights more firmly, pushed his fingers in deeper around them and pulled on a wire that made Ratchet twitch, flooding his systems with pleasure...

It was so good. But—

Ratchet distracted himself by stroking down Mixmaster's chassis, and was about to speak when the Decepticon moved his fingers to probe curiously at sensors he could reach at the join where Ratchet's head met his neck. This time even his optics were momentarily lost, sparking with the feedback, and he _knew_ he'd made a sound that was utterly undignified but Mixmaster looked so _pleased,_ at least momentarily, that he was the one making those sounds—

"Mixmaster," he whispered, and even his name was enough to make the Decepticon underneath him vocalize wordlessly and push up against him again. "I—" he paused, momentarily unsure. "I want to feel you too. If you want this, if you're not afraid—"

"I won't be," Mixmaster said, and it was as much a decision as it was a promise when he said it. But he still curled his head away from Ratchet as he held out an interface cable, and Ratchet could taste his hesitation—_but no fear, thank Primus—_when he slotted the connection into place.

It took him a full half minute to recover from the new feelings, and Mixmaster seemed just as stunned. His systems were running hot, he was so _close_ to overload, and so he drew it out, wanting to make this last—partly, at least, another part of him just wanted more contact, more touch, _more_.

Ratchet pushed his fingers into Mixmaster again, and tugged at another bladed extension, and pushed against him. Mixmaster was having trouble moving, overwhelmed and just as close to the edge of overload, more so, but he ran his hands over Ratchet, what he could reach of him, desperate and that was enough, with the feelings and the feedback running through Ratchet's processor.

When Mixmaster found a knot of sensory wires and tangled his fingers up in it, tugging delicately in a way that was agonizingly sensuous, Ratchet couldn't resist sending his happiness, his desire, over their link, and—and maybe he was excessively involved in _who_ it was, not just what they were doing, what was being done to him, but he couldn't bring himself to care, it wasn't like he hadn't broken every bond of propriety already, and it was enough to make Mixmaster cry out underneath him and shudder as his overload hit him, almost incapacitated, and the sensation of that echoed, tipped Ratchet over the same edge, and he had just enough presence of mind to roll mostly off of Mixmaster—as far as their physical ties permitted, their cables still attached—before he collapsed completely, systems overworked and still tense with fading pleasure.

After a minute, he unsnapped their cables, hand shaking slightly. He shook his head at that—he should have better control.

"Thank-k you," Mixmaster said, after a while.

"Don't bother thanking me," Ratchet said, but his voice was warm enough to keep the sentence from being harsh.

"Al-lri-ight-t-t," Mixmaster said, voice happy, and Ratchet understood that, just like he'd been understood—he hadn't meant to insult Mixmaster, he just hadn't thought that thanks were due. And Mixmaster was accepting that—because he felt the same, or for whatever reason.

After a while, he left. And Ratchet picked himself up and returned to town, trying not to feel sad and diminished. He knew what had to happen, what he needed to do.

At the very least, he needed to accept that his world was going back to normal. That these incidents needed to stop.

* * *

Ratchet was less surprised when Long Haul reappeared, five days after his run-in with Mixmaster. It hadn't been hard to come to the realization that things weren't over, really. He didn't _want_ them to be, even if it complicated things even more.

"What is it?" Ratchet asked as Long Haul pulled up next to him.

"What the slag sort of greeting is _that?_"

"Fine—hello, Long Haul. Fancy meeting you here! What a nice surprise—"

"Shut up," muttered the Decepticon, before he continued, and he sounded angry, but Ratchet could hear that he wasn't, knew him well enough to know better than to take it seriously. "Hook wants you to check up on the repairs you made. He thinks something's gone wrong."

"Really." Personally, Ratchet was of the opinion that Hook had his energon processor poisoning his 'facing port, but he wasn't going to say that out loud. Not in so many words, at least. "You'll need to transform."

"Sure."

Ratchet carefully poked and prodded at the mech, examining him, but he couldn't find anything wrong, no matter what, not even any hints that something _might_ be broken, or regressed—He said as much. "I think Hook's being paranoid—excuse me, _overly cautious—_again. I can run a scan if you don't mind me jacking into your system, but I don't think I'll find anything else."

"Go for it. Hook'll just send me back if he thinks you weren't pit-slagged _thorough_ enough—_you_ know."

And Ratchet _did_ know. That was thing.

"Alright, I'll set it up. Let's hope this works just as well as it did last time—I'm pretty sure the energon loss was relaxing you."

"Really? The last time I lost a lot of energon, I ended up offlining a medic and then jumping Bonecrusher before I passed out. I don't think it's ever made me _calm_ before."

"It can hit differently in different situations," Ratchet replied, an undercurrent of polite disbelief in his voice—mostly he was just distracted, but he couldn't imagine that any medic with even an _inch_ of talent would have had significant problems getting into Long Haul's processor, considering what an easy time he'd had. "Now, hold still—and try not to fight me."

He shouldn't have worried. The connection formed just as smoothly, easily and naturally as it had before, Long Haul relaxing, opening up as Ratchet's consciousness filtered through his, searching for anything wrong. He didn't find a thing—he hadn't been expecting to—and he slipped back to his own body almost surreptitiously. Long Haul didn't move as he unclipped the cable he'd used, apparently still luxuriating in the comfort of a fitting connection—although it couldn't be any different from what he experienced as a gestalt. Ratchet could see his own attraction to the feeling, but presumably it wasn't a novelty for Long Haul the way it was for him.

He looked down at the still form and felt a twinge of interest. But— He shouldn't be interfacing Decepticons at all, let alone _initiating_ it in an ever-wider group of partners…

He _knew_ that.

...Oh, _scrap_. Ratchet ran fingers over the small, no-doubt-_sensitive _antennae on Long Haul's head, pressing firmly but not quite hard—the Decepticon's optics flashed back online immediately, and he made a grab for Ratchet's wrist, grasping it tight enough that it was just short of painful.

"That felt— That was on purpose."

"Yes."

"_Good_."

--End Chapter 11--

Nice long chapter! With some unplanned sexin'--the Mixmaster scenes are all new. Thank you to all my readers--especially the ones I don't usually get to thank in review replies! And for a person who does review--Prototron MJ Tornada—thank you very much! I'd like to send you a proper review reply, but you have PMs disabled, so I'm thanking you here. In answer to your question—patience. ;)


	12. Chapter 12

**Sheer Dumb Luck**  
Part 12

By Dreaming of Everything, betaed by mmouse15

Author's Note: Sorry for the wait! I'm a lot busier these days, but I'm adjusting—hopefully future chapters will come faster. There's only two chapters to go, which helps, I think. Also, you should go check out the awesome art Neurquadic drew of the Constructicons for me! There's a link in my profile, or you can find it on her DeviantArt page. Thank you so much, Neurquadic!

* * *

Bonecrusher followed Ratchet for three days before the Autobot realized who he was. The mech needed to send a request to open a commlink for the medic to realize that he wanted to talk.

He didn't accept the connection, but he did move out to the desert that night, and waited for the other to show up. It felt.. odd. Because he didn't _know_ Bonecrusher, just his gestalt-mates: he was agreeing to meet an unknown Decepticon, when you got down to it.

And that hadn't stopped him.

He was only waiting for an hour before Bonecrusher appeared, and the two sat in silence for an hour longer before either of them spoke.

"So _you're_ Ratchet."

"Yes..." Of _course_.

"Thanks."

"I wish you—_all_ of you—would stop doing that."

"Oh, don't you start, _Autobot_—you think I'd be here if I didn't think that I needed to be? Slagging _no_. But you saved me—which wouldn't matter much except what it means to _them_. –And then Long Haul and Mixmaster and you might be some bleeding-heart sap taken in by a sob story but I _owe_ you."

"I don't know why I did it," Ratchet said quietly. "Why I'm doing this. I _should_ have reported you—and I _would_ have, so it's not so much overcome with some selfless need to heal my mortal enemies as it was a moment of insanity—"

"Huh. You _did_ scan us. And you match, that helps."

"What?"

"You're the medic, you tell me."

"You mean I've been influenced—as have you, and your team—by the way my mental patterns fit into yours? _That's_ why we've been so—so obscenely trusting of each other? But—"

"I don't think that it makes much of a difference. It was the _start_ of things—it's more who you are. It helps, but—mostly it was you helping us. Once, we met someone else who matched us, and I think Scrapper built something out of him after I killed him because he was an annoying little traitor. A _boring_ one."

"I suppose I should thank you for not killing me, then." Ratchet mostly sounded dry—although it did occur to him that his life was, quite possibly, in danger.

"Damn straight. ...I guess you're not too bad, for an Autobot. The others like you."

"You know I'm betraying my team, being here. How's your feelings when it comes to the Prime cutting off your head?"

"Can't say I'm not pissy. But he killed Megatron."

"Actually, that was a human."

"—_Seriously?_ Hah! Slagger deserved to be offlined by a little insect."

"Charming. You're more like Long Haul than, say, Hook, aren't you?"

"Yeah. Me and 'Hauler've got a lot in common. Now."

"What's that mean?" Ratchet hedged, getting the sense that most mechs would not be having this conversation with Bonecrusher.

"I wanted to destroy _everything_. I hated everyone. It was kind of fun. Sometimes. I'm still not the nice one—I'd be tracking your Optimus Prime down right now if it wasn't stupid and if the others were okay with the idea—"

"They're not?"

"No, you wouldn't like it, and we _owe_ you. So. I'm still not the nice one, but I can be—not-angry again, now I'm not alone anymore. They _like_ having me there—and it's not just needing it. _Me_ being there makes 'em happy, it's not the bond being good again, entirely—And I don't really hate everything now. This stupid planet is still fragging _awful_ but Scavenger really likes it—he keeps on showing up with weird things to show me—and Scrapper likes the new ideas for designs even if it drives Hook crazy, and Long Haul's as happy as he ever is, And Mixmaster's got new stuff to play with…"

There was a moment of silence.

"So you just came out here to _thank_ me?"

"And to get to know you a little better—y'know, my own impression, that slag. Want to fuck?"

"We haven't really known each other all that long." Mostly, Ratchet was privately amused.

"Like slag—I get memories of you whenever I tie into any of the others. Or all of them. And _you_ started it with Long Haul. And you haven't known any of them all that well."

"So why _should_ I interface with you?"

"Figures you're like some weird mix of Scrapper and Hook— Because I _want to_. You do too, right? You don't need any more of a reason_._"

"You're right. I do want it."

Ratchet was pinned a split-second later, Bonecrusher's body heavy on top of him, and Ratchet realized the benefits of an engine place surprisingly close to the surface as it rumbled against him. "Good," Bonecrusher growled. There was nothing subtle about the raw lust in his voice, or the way he shoved a finger at one of Ratchet's interface ports, fumbling around it, before he found his own cable and, unceremonious, clicked it into place, waiting just long enough for Ratchet to complain or protest. Which he didn't.

He was holding back most of the data, waiting, giving Ratchet enough time to complete the circuit before he set it loose, the rush of information—as subtle as a brick to the face—tearing through him, electrifying, overwhelming—Ratchet kept on catching split-second snatches of the other Decepticons looking in, but nothing more—it was more than he could concentrate on.

Bonecrusher dragged his fingers down Ratchet's hand, metal squealing against metal, and the sensation made him thrash hard enough to almost dislodge the cables connecting them, even pinned the way he was. He responded by pulsing his personal field and Bonecrusher moaned into the sand, grip tightening spasmodically. Ratchet couldn't hide the sudden pain, not with the volume of their data exchange, and the painful grasp crushing his hand and wrist lessened, even if Bonecrusher wasn't at all repentant: he turned his attentions to a neck joint, forcing his fingers in and twisting. Ratchet made a helpless noise, scratching at another seam in Bonecrusher's armor and arching up into the touch, pressing against the other mech. His engine was racing, vibrations shuddering through his frame and into Bonecrusher's—they mixed with the heavier, closer vibrations from the Constructicon's engine, singing across taught wires and cables until it was just shy of painful. But mostly, it was agonizingly good—

Ratchet's hands ran over Bonecrusher's shoulder and head, finally slipping his hands into the space between Bonecrusher's body and head, pressing at first delicately and then harder, when he felt the unspoken need for more—the burning desire—come across their temporary bond. It was in the way Bonecrusher pushed down on him, too, hands stopping their own exploration as he was temporarily overcome by the sheer sensation. It made Ratchet's engine rev even harder, and it wasn't all about how he could feel the feedback. He pushed harder, than nipped at a shoulder, engine going so loud that it was almost embarrassing. Bonecrusher liked it, though.

He moved his hands to the medic's lights, pushing around them and growling against the metal of Ratchet's neck and shoulders until the vibrations had him moaning helplessly, squirming in wordless ecstasy. He pushed up against Bonecrusher until his engine was up against Ratchet's spark, the other mech so heavy against him, surrounding him and his hands in-between his armor, trying to figure out how to make the medic scream (Ratchet could hear him thinking it, even over all the lust and desire and—something softer, it was almost—it was almost sweet, even though it was _Bonecrusher_) as he played with the wires. Ratchet moved his hands again and found a sensor node, brushing against it—teasing—before he pressed against it, hard and firm and loving, and sparks burst across his vision before it went black and he passed out, system overloading, dimly aware that the surge of energy he released pushed Bonecrusher over the edge just after him.

Ratchet roused himself long enough to set up an automatic scan to warn him of anyone approaching, feeling Bonecrusher stir sleepily at the activity—they were still linked, since he couldn't find the energy to disconnect them—and then slipped back into true recharge. At peace.

* * *

When Ratchet woke back up, he'd been disconnected from Bonecrusher, who was still there. The rest of the Constructicons were there as well, leaning against each other in a baroque tangle of metal parts, some surfaces silvered with moonlight and others dark, their eyes red points of light in the night.

"What?" he asked, pulling himself upright, unable to figure out what would have brought the six of them out here. Immediately, all eyes flicked to him, and one figure stirred, just slightly. And then they started their transformation.

Ratchet watched, awed, as their forms shifted, interconnected, knotted together, and finally the combiner sat up, dwarfing Ratchet: he was big enough to hold him in his two hands.

It finally occurred to him that gestalts were creations of war, and he felt a sudden spark of fear. Were they going to remove their greatest weakness? Why else would they be combining?

"I am Devastator," announced the giant, voice booming around Ratchet, surrounding him.

So a combiner was an entity unto itself. This one was, at least. "Uh... Hi." Really, it shouldn't have been so surprising: there had been guesses about that, in the papers that had been written—the ones he'd gotten a hold of; there were definitely others, possibly more definite and more accurate, that he'd never seen.

Devastator's hands reached down to surround him, effortless, the touch soft but insistent, ignoring the way Ratchet tried to subtly deflect the gentle contact. Finally he was just picked up bodily, with an embarrassing squawking noise at the mistreatment.

"What are you doing?! Put me down!"

Surprisingly, he was let down, and there was a still moment while he could just stare at the huge mech in front of him, silhouetted against the horizon, backlit by the bright moon. After a minute, one gigantic hand moved to touch him again, and this time Ratchet let him, curiously running fingers over what he could reach. This had to be why he'd seen so many redundant systems in Bonecrusher, so many apparently useless features worked into his design: for the combination. There had to be some kind of modified valve that worked to attach their energon-processing systems—and something beyond that to make sure that none of them ended up with more or less energon than they could handle when they separated again—

He was being picked up again. This time, he let it happen: it wasn't like he was going to be able to change it, certainly not easily. Despite that, he felt—oddly comfortable. On edge, yes, but not panicky, the way you'd expect. If nothing else, Devastator didn't seem to want to hurt him.

Cupped hands—oddly shaped, both of them, and mismatched: clearly, there were limits to the transformation technology—held him against the body of the gestalt. Ratchet could feel an engine beneath him, working maybe a little harder than was normal: probably a side effect of the increased size, he cataloged vaguely. The sensation of the working system next to him was oddly...comforting.

The Constructicons really were wearing off on him. He was turning out to be almost as deviant as they were.

The steady humming increased, vibrating through Ratchet's frame, increasingly intrusive. The sensation was...pleasant.

"Is... Is that on purpose?"

There wasn't an answer, but the rhythm picked up again.

"Devastator. Answer me: Is. That. On. Purpose?"

"Yes," he rumbled, voice dark and low and—not at all intimidating. Despite all this.

Primus. A gestalt, _in the combined form_, was attempting to interface him. _That_ was intimidating.

He was torn with misgivings, but his hands curled involuntarily at the growing pleasure. One giant finger ran down his back, seemingly in encouragement.

_Oh, slag it_. Mind made up, Ratchet shoved most of his arm into the mech, feeling around for the right wires.

--End--


End file.
